Salvador archbishop nixes probe of killed Jesuits

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SAN SALVADOR — The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador opposes reopening the prosecution of Salvadoran officials in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, the cleric said Sunday.

Human rights activists have pushed for a trial of a former president and 14 other Salvadoran officials in Spain, where five of the killed Jesuits were born.

Archbishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle called the killings at the height of the country's 1980-92 civil war "a frightful crime," but said he was sure that former President Alfredo Cristiani was not involved.

"Opening this case in another country's courts won't help the process of domestic reconciliation," he said. "El Salvador's affairs should be resolved in El Salvador."

The Jesuit order in El Salvador also decided not to participate in the Spanish case, Jesuit university rector Father Jose Maria Tojeira said.

Activists said a former defense minister was present at a meeting where the attack was planned on the Jesuits, whom the army accused of supporting leftist rebels. The human rights groups said Cristiani helped to cover up the crime.

A housekeeper and her daughter also died in the attack.

Spanish courts sometimes invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows for the prosecution of crimes against humanity and other grave offenses such as terrorism, even in another country.

A trial over the massacre was held in El Salvador in 1991, but only two of the 10 defendants were convicted of murder and they were released early from their 30-year sentences under a 1993 amnesty, human rights groups said. Others convicted of lesser charges did not go to jail at all, they added.

Cristiani signed a 1992 peace accord with leftist rebels that put an end to a civil war that killed 75,000 people.

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