EL SALVADOR:
Death Squads Still
Operating
By
Raúl Gutiérrez
SAN SALVADOR, (IPS)
- Recent arrests of
police officers in El
Salvador accused of
committing extrajudicial
executions have
encouraged human rights
activists and experts
who have long reported
the continued existence
of death squads in this
Central American
country.
For years, human rights
organisations and
experts have said the
death squads that
operated during the
counterinsurgency war in
the 1980s never
disappeared, but merely
became groups of paid
killers that still
operate with impunity,
and are hired to "settle
scores, carry out
vengeance killings,
eliminate a
businessman’s
competitor, carry out
‘social cleansing’ or
work for organised
crime."
Lawyer Jaime Martínez,
with the Institute of
Comparative Studies in
Criminal and Social
Science (INECIP), told
IPS that the groups "are
the visible face of
organised crime, and do
their dirty work."
There are strong
indications that
"criminal groups are
embedded" in the
National Civilian Police
(PNC), said Martínez.
He lamented that the
authorities have not
made this a key concern,
and instead dismiss such
reports by arguing that
the problem is just a
few bad officers who
must be weeded out.
"We cannot continue to
believe in the ‘few bad
apples’ theory," said
the expert, who
conducted research on
citizen security and
death squads when he
headed the Foundation
for Studies on the
Application of Rights (FESPAD)
Criminal Studies Centre
for 13 years.
Police Sergeant Nelson
Arriaza and officer
Roberto Carlos Chévez
were arrested Jul. 28,
along with the now
fugitive Rember Martínez,
and accused of murdering
campesino (small farmer)
Amado García in the town
of Nueva Esparta in the
northeastern department
(province) of Morazán.
Four other police
officers were arrested
Aug. 27 in the eastern
department of San Miguel
in connection with the
group headed by Arriaza,
and were charged with
belonging to a death
squad.
Another police officer
and a civilian are also
facing arrest for
alleged ties to the same
group.
PNC chiefs have
acknowledged the
problem, which they
downplay, however, as
"isolated incidents."
But the prosecutor’s
office has not ruled out
an investigation into
possible connections
between Arriaza and
other members of the
PNC, as well as other
killings in San Miguel,
where the police
sergeant was posted.
Another indication of
the existence of death
squads was the
distribution of flyers
over the past two weeks
in the town of
Chalchuapa, 80 km from
San Salvador, signed
simply with the initials
"E.L." The leaflets
declare a "curfew" and
urge local residents and
the members of the PNC
themselves to stay
inside at night.
"For your own good, we
advise you not to be on
the streets after 10:00
PM, because we are
carrying out a cleansing
campaign," says the
flyer.
The town’s murder rate
has soared from four or
five killings a month at
the beginning of the
year to 17 in August
alone, according to the
local PNC offices.
In the 1970s and 1980s,
death squads in El
Salvador abducted,
tortured and killed
thousands of students,
trade unionists,
teachers and leftist
political leaders and
activists, as part of
the U.S.-backed
anti-Communist crusade
led by the late Major
Roberto d'Aubuisson,
founder of the
right-wing Nationalist
Republican Alliance
(ARENA), which has
governed the country
since 1989.
The 1980-1992 armed
conflict between the
security forces and the
leftist Farabundo Martí
National Liberation
Front (FMLN) left 75,000
people dead and 8,000
"disappeared".
But although a 1992
peace agreement put an
end to the civil war, El
Salvador still has one
of the highest homicide
rates in the world: 56
per 100,000 population
in 2006, according to
the Institute of
Forensic Medicine.
The Inter-American Court
on Human Rights will
soon hand down a ruling
in the case of the June
1994 murder of
businessman Mauricio
García Prieto, who was
allegedly the victim of
a death squad. García
Prieto’s parents took
the case to the
Inter-American Court
when they were unable to
find justice in El
Salvador.
In addition, several
leaders of the FMLN --
now the main opposition
party -- were killed
after the peace
agreement was signed,
including Mario López
and Darol Francisco
Velis, who were murdered
in 1993 by death squads.
Others escaped attempts
on their lives.
In late 1993, the
inter-institutional
Joint Group for the
Investigation of
Politically Motivated
Illegal Armed Groups was
set up, led by the
United Nations observer
mission that monitored
the peace process.
In its 110-page report,
the Joint Group cited
declassified documents
from the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency
(CIA) which referred to
death squads that
operated between 1980
and 1991.
But an appendix to the
report that was never
made public contained
the names of businessmen
and member of the
military involved in
death squads, which
according to the
investigators were
financed since 1979 by
government security
offices, kidnapping,
extortion and
contributions from
members of the ruling
elite in El Salvador.
The death squads also
received support from
members of the elite in
Guatemala and even
Miami, Florida, as well
as from right-wing
groups in Argentina,
Venezuela and Mexico,
and the World
Anti-Communist League,
according to the Joint
Group.
The 1994 report stated
that after the end of
the civil war, the
nature of political
violence had shifted
"toward more
decentralised structures
geared primarily to
common crime and
exhibiting a high degree
of organisation."
It also maintained that
this "broad network of
organised crime ..., in
which ... there is
active participation of
members of the armed
forces of El Salvador
and the National Police,
cannot be divorced from
many acts of politically
motivated violence."
David Morales, a lawyer
with Tutela Legal del
Arzobispado, the
Catholic church’s legal
aid office in San
Salvador, told IPS that
despite the fact that
the Joint Group
"recommended that former
president (Armando)
Calderón (1994-1999)
take measures to
dismantle these groups,
the recommendation was
never heeded."
And today, the death
squads "are intact,
active and armed," he
asserted.
In 1993, a group that
calls itself Angels of
Death committed a wave
of murders in western El
Salvador, while a
"social cleansing"
squad, Black Shadow,
killed a number of
suspected gang members
in San Miguel in 1994
and 1995.
At that time, an
assistant police
commissioner and several
PNC officers, along with
a former soldier who is
now mayor of San Miguel,
Wilfredo Salgado, were
accused of the murders,
but the cases were
closed when the key
witness failed to show
up at court.
The witness, police
Sergeant Vilma
Quintanilla, had refused
to take part in the
activities of Black
Shadow.
After becoming a
whistle-blower,
Quintanilla, who was
afraid of being killed
if she testified, fled
the country, according
to the documents from
the case, which Morales
handled when he was
assistant human rights
ombudsman.
INECIP’s Martínez said
that 622 possible cases
of death squad killings
were documented by
FESPAD between January
2001 and August 2005.
In 2006, the Human
Rights Ombudsman’s
Office (PDDH) reported
the case of a young man,
Abimilet Ramírez, who
after being picked up by
the police was thrown
down a well.
He survived, and there
were witnesses who saw
him being seized by the
police. But he was
killed later, after he
and the PDDH reported
his case to the public
prosecutor’s office.
Investigations by human
rights organisations
have found that these
incidents form part of
"homicidal practices"
that "year after year
have been seen in the
post-war period, and up
to the present, and that
are carried out with the
acquiescence of
high-ranking
authorities," Morales
said in a television
interview.
These groups "resort to
common crime or
organised crime as a
means of financing
themselves," he added.
The PNC has been
perverted to such an
extent that it has
completely lost the
values and principles
that it had when it was
created as the country’s
new civilian police
force by the peace
agreement, said Martínez.
Human Rights Ombudsman
Oscar Luna said he would
propose "the creation of
an external commission
to investigate the
police," because "there
is no effective
oversight" of the PNC.
Civil society
representatives would
form part of the
commission, he said.
Martínez said such a
commission should also
review the country’s
public security
policies, strengthen the
PNC’s poor capacity to
investigate crimes,
review the police
force’s budget, and
develop oversight and
disciplinary mechanisms
for the PNC, while
studying the labour
conditions and rights of
the police officers.
Without such an in-depth
analysis and overhaul,
he said, the police
force will continue
reverting to the past. |
