Case of Six Murdered Jesuit Priests Re-examined!

I have been reading multiple reports on this story from all over the Internet. Sources focused on human rights, international law and justice, faith based groups, groups with a focus on Latin American history and just plain folks who report, blog and post about world news generally have all been writing about this piece of news!

Charges have been filed by two Human Rights Organizations in Spain against former Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani and 14 members of the army in connection with the 1989 slaughter of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter.

According to an article at the Global News Blog:

The Spanish Association for Human Rights (APDHE) and the San Francisco-based Centre for Justice and Accountability (CJA) filed a criminal case in the Spanish high court against former president Cristiani (1989-1994), accusing him of protecting the murderers and obstructing the subsequent investigation, and against 14 officers and soldiers of the Salvadoran army for their direct involvement in the massacre and in covering up the crime.

Read the whole story here. More information can be found on blogs and news sources all over the web if you do a quick search.

I find this to be amazing news because when we visited the sight of the murders at University of Central America last August, our tour guide was hesitant to identify those responsible even to us, a group of church folk from the US. The answer we received to the question of "who was responsible for this atrocity, the Government or some rogue members of the Army?" was a rather short and vague, "the person responsible was the only one who could have given such an order". We were all immediately struck by the fear in this answer. She obviously felt unable to tell us, even after 19 years, her thoughts on the perpetrator(s).

May the hearing of this case bring justice in this case and more importantly, may it help eliminate more fear from this country.

More links about this story:
New York Times
Irish Times
LA Times