U.S.

Generals Cleared In Salvadoran Deaths

October 10, 2000 / 8:41 PM EDT / AP

A federal jury cleared two former Salvadoran generals of liability in the 1980 deaths of four American church women.

The federal jury decided that former Salvadoran Defense Minister Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, former head of the Salvadoran National Guard, weren't responsible for the women being raped and slain by Salvadoran troops.

Lawyers for the families said they would seek a new trial.

Nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan were killed on Dec. 2, 1980, apparently because military-backed death squads suspected them of sympathizing with leftist guerrillas.

The crime outraged many in United States, in part because the U.S. government strongly supported the Salvadoran government during the 1980-92 civil war. Five Salvadoran National Guard members were convicted of the killings and sentenced to 30 years in Salvadoran prison; three have been released and two remain in jail.

The victims' families contended the generals had a responsibility to control the troops who committed the crime. They had asked jurors to award $100 million in compensatory damages plus an unspecified amount in punitive damages.

But family members said during the trial that they would be happy to see the generals forced to leave their retirement havens and go back home, and they had hoped the outcome of the trial would provide U.S. Immigration officials with ammunition to somehow do that.

Lawyers for their families showed jurors numerous declassified documents to illustrate the generals' failure to stop their soldiers from killing thousands of Salvadorans, including the country's Roman Catholic archbishop, six Jesuit priests, doctors and peasants.

The generals' lawyer showed military-produced videotapes of Garcia asking soldiers to respect the human rights of fellow Salvadorans.

Jury foreman Bruce Schnirel said the 10 jurors did not believe the former generals had enough control over their troops to be held responsible.

"It was presented to us as such a chaotic time," said Schnirel, a 50-year-old postal worker.

"We didn't have the smoking gun," said Robert Montgomery, a lawyer for the women's families. "We didn't have an order from the generals…We didn't have anything but circumstantial evidence."

It was the first time the alleged perpetrators of war crimes in a foreign land have been brought to trial in the United States.

"I am satisfied," Garcia, 67, said by telephone from his Plantation home. "The U.S. judicial system does function well. This was why we responded and I think we had enough valor to present ourselves to respond for everything that was thrown at us."

Vides Casanova, 62, said he has great respect for the families and feels tremendous pain for the loved ones they lost. But he said both men did everything they could do amid the overall violence.

"We tried to show that we did everything we could to bring to jusice those who murdered those nuns," Vides Casanova said from his Palm Coast home.

Garcia and Vides Casanova retired to Florida in 1989 and were granted U.S. residency because they had never been convicted of a crime. Garcia said he was fleeing death threats.

They lived quietly in middle-class neighborhoods until families of the slain women learned from a reporter they were here. The families failed in efforts to have the two tried in criminal court in their homeland, so they turned instead to the U.S. courts, filing suit against the men.

Michael Posner, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in Washington, which helped bring the lawsuit, called the jury decision was "wrong."

"We need to establish a firm precedent globally that military commanders bear personal responsibility for the actions of their troops," Posner said.

Next May, the former generals are to stand trial for the kidnapping and torture of four Salvadorans who now live in the United States.