On Saturday, an El Salvadorian court ordered the arrest of ex-president Alfredo Cristiani for an alleged cover-up related to a civil war-era massacre of some 1,000 people.
According to Alejandro Diaz, a lawyer for the victim’s family, who confirmed a court resolution, Cristiani’s provisional detention arises from an amnesty he declared after the 1981 killings as part of a personal cover-up.
The ruling, which also orders the arrest of four Cristiani deputies, was issued by a court in the city of San Francisco Gotera, which is prosecuting multiple Salvadoran military officers for the killing.
The Mozote massacre considered the largest in Latin America, occurred during the country’s civil war 1980-1992.
“We are interested in seeing that all those responsible be prosecuted”, said Diaz, including those who hampered investigators.
According to the resolution, Cristiani and the others shielded the perpetrators by advocating a law enacted in 1993 but revoked in 2016 that guaranteed absolute impunity to the authors of the massacres.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights reprimanded the Salvadoran government for its role in the deaths in 2012.
Salvadoran army units, led by the US-trained Atlacatl counterinsurgency battalion, launched an offensive in the Morazan district from December 9 to 13, 1981.
In 2017, the authorities found that at least 988 people, including 558 children, were murdered in and around El Mozote for allegedly supporting the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.
The Salvadoran conflict killed over 75,000 people and left at least 7,000 missing.
Another judge ordered Cristiani’s arrest in March 2022 for allegedly taking part in the assassination planning of the six Catholic priests and two others.
Cristiani has refuted all allegations.
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