The ruling by the Court of First Instance of Dulce Nombre de María decided to preventively seize the assets of Francisco Antonio Morán, José Guillermo García and Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, all currently under prosecution.

General García, former Minister of Defense, and General Morán, director of the National Treasury Police at the time, have been under arrest at the Bautista Hospital in this capital since October 2022, and Colonel Reyes Mena, head of the Fourth Infantry Brigade, a US resident, is wanted for extradition.

The Attorney General’s Office is charging them, along with former Sergeant Mario Canizales Espinoza and Colonel Rafael Flores Lima, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both deceased, of participating in the ambush that left four Dutch journalists dead on March 17, 1982.

Dutch journalists Koos Jacobus Andries Koster, Jan Cornelius Kuiper Joop, Hans Lodewijk ter Laag and Hohannes Jan Wilemsen were murdered by a patrol of the Atonal Battalion that left the Fourth Infantry Brigade of El Paraíso, which ambushed them in Santa Rita, Chalatenango.

In a ruling in October 2022, the Court of First Instance of Dulce Nombre de María ordered the arrest of the former military officers, to prosecute them for the crime of murder, based on regulations of the 1974 Penal Code.

For human rights groups, this step could mark the end of impunity in the country for crimes committed during the conflict that pitted some Salvadorans against others, leaving a death toll of over 75,000 dead and missing. ied/oda/lb