A court of The Savior ordered the arrest of former president Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994) accused of covering up those responsible for the massacre of The Mozotewhere about a thousand people died in 1981 at the hands of the army during the civil war, a source linked to the case reported this Saturday.
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The “provisional detention” against Cristianiwhose whereabouts are unknown, is required for the crime of “personal concealment” for decreeing an amnesty after the massacre, according to a resolution of the court handling the case, confirmed to AFP by the lawyer Alejandro Diazwho accompanies relatives of victims.
The order, which also covers four former deputies, was issued by a court in the city of San Francisco Gotera (northeast) that prosecutes several soldiers for the massacre, considered the largest in Latin America and perpetrated during the war that El Salvador suffered from 1980 to 1992.
“We are interested in prosecuting all those responsible and for years there has been talk about the people who have been hindering, only we think that there are more who are involved (…) and it should really be investigated”Diaz added.
According to the resolution, Cristiani and the other defendants covered up those allegedly responsible for the massacre by promoting the regulations published in 1993 and which were later repealed in 2016.
That law “guaranteed them full and absolute impunity to the material and intellectual authors” of the massacres of El Mozote and surrounding places, the text indicated.
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“Political” resolution?
The Mozote massacre It is the largest mass murder known to man. Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court), which condemned the Salvadoran State on October 28, 2012.
The massacre occurred between December 9 and 13, 1981, when units of the Salvadoran Army, led by the counterinsurgency battalion Atlacatl -trained by USA-, they launched the so-called “Operation Rescue“against the population of the northeast of the department of Morazan.
The government of The Savior established in 2017 that at least 988 people, including 558 children, were murdered in The Mozote and the adjacent communities due to suspicions of collaborating with the then guerrilla Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FML).
Others 712 peopleThose who survived the attack left the area. The conflict in The Savior It left more than 75,000 dead, at least 7,000 missing and thousands displaced.
Although he considered that it is necessary to stop “concealers”, Díaz expressed concern that the order against Cristiani has political overtones in view of next year’s presidential elections in which the president will compete. Nayib Bukele.
“We are concerned that it is part of a political manipulation with a more electoral vision and not to pay in the resolution of the case that is already 42 years old”said.
In March 2022, another judge had ordered the arrest of Cristiani for allegedly having participated in the planning of the murder of six Catholic priests and two collaborators, committed by the army in 1989 on the campus of the Jesuit Universidad Centroamericana (UCA).
The former ruler, who is apparently out of the country with unknown locationdenied the charges on that occasion.
Cristiani He has also been involved in acts of corruption and in June several assets were seized by the prosecution, in a process of “domain extinction” against the former president who governed under the banner of the right-wing party Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).
