Court delays decision on extraditing El Salvador’s “Col. Inocente” for 1989 massacre

August 20th, 2015 (EFE) A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday postponed its decision on the extradition to Spain of a retired Salvadoran army officer wanted for the 1989 murders of five Spanish Jesuit priests in the Central American nation.

District Court Judge Kimberly A. Swank decided to hear more arguments from prosecutors and the attorneys representing Col. Inocente Orlando Montano, 72.

Montano, without his trademark bushy mustache, attended the hearing at the federal courthouse in Greenville using a walker and dressed in the orange jumpsuit worn by inmates at the prison where he is being held pending a decision on his extradition.

At the prison, Montano has already completed a 21-month term for lying on his U.S. immigration documents.

He successfully applied in 2002 for Temporary Protected Status, a benefit the U.S. government extends to migrants from countries battered by natural disasters or internal conflict.

Documents presented in court showed he concealed his Salvadoran military service on the initial TPS application and on subsequent applications for renewal.

U.S. authorities later learned that Montano had been linked to a number of atrocities during El Salvador’s civil war, including the massacre of the Jesuits.

During Wednesday’s hearing, federal prosecutor John Capin, argued that Montano should be extradited to Spain as per the extradition treaty between Washington and Madrid.

In 2011, Spanish National Court Judge Eloy Velasco requested the extradition of 15 out of the 20 Salvadoran military men involved in the killings of the priests, which took place at the height of El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war.

The Justice Department says Montano was present at a meeting prior to the killings where one officer ordered the assassination of one of the Jesuits, the Rev. Ignacio Ellacuria, and the elimination of any witnesses.

The following day, Nov. 16, 1989, Salvadoran soldiers invaded the Central American University campus in San Salvador and killed then-chancellor Ellacuria and four other Spanish priests: Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Amando Lopez and Juan Ramon Moreno, along with Salvadoran Jesuit Joaquin Lopez.

Also slain were a cook and her 16-year-old daughter.

Montano, then El Salvador’s deputy defense minister, controlled an official radio station that broadcast threats against Ellacuria and his colleagues in the days leading up to the murders, according to the Justice Department.

In 1993, El Salvador enacted an amnesty law that protects soldiers and insurgents who committed crimes against humanity during the armed conflict.