[News] Fresno suit recalls Salvadoran cleric's slaying in '80

[News at freedomarchives.org]

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/25//cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/25/MNGHQ8DV7C1.DTL>Fresno 
suit hearing recalls Salvadoran cleric's slaying in '80
- <mailto:thendricks at sfchronicle.com>Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Fresno -- The brazen murder of El Salvador's Roman Catholic Archbishop, 
Oscar Arnulfo Romero, was vividly recalled Tuesday at an unusual hearing in 
a Fresno courtroom.

Romero, an internationally revered peace advocate, was shot through the 
heart on the evening of March 24, 1980, while saying Mass at a San Salvador 
hospital chapel. He had been an outspoken opponent of the growing 
repression in his country and was described by the then-U.S. ambassador as 
"the most important leader in El Salvador at that time."

The hearing in federal district court in Fresno, which continues through 
Friday, is the first time anyone has been taken to court for the 
assassination of the archbishop, whose death helped catapult El Salvador 
into a civil war that claimed 75,000 lives and lasted until 1992.

Using a little-known 18th century law, the Alien Tort Claims Act, as well 
as the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act, the Center for Justice and 
Accountability, a San Francisco human rights group, filed a civil suit last 
year on behalf of Romero's brother against a former captain in the 
Salvadoran air force, Alvaro Rafael Saravia, for playing a key role in the 
assassination. The brother's identity is not being revealed in court out of 
concern for his safety.

Saravia, who until recently had been living in Modesto, did not answer the 
complaint against him, so the court ruled against him by default. But given 
the unusual nature of the case, Federal Judge Oliver W. Wanger scheduled 
this week's hearing to ensure he had jurisdiction in the case and determine 
liability and the amount of damages, if any.

Saravia did not appear in court Tuesday, nor did he have an attorney 
represent him. He could not be reached for comment and is believed to have 
gone into hiding.

In 1987, Saravia was arrested in Florida and held for 14 months after a 
Salvadoran judge asked that he be extradited to stand trial in the Romero 
assassination. But the case never went to trial in El Salvador, and Saravia 
was eventually released. His Miami attorney, Neal Sonnett, was out of the 
country and could not be reached for comment.

An amnesty law passed in El Salvador in 1993 at the end of the war prevents 
trial of the case there.

The center won a $54 million judgment in 2002 against two Salvadoran former 
ministers of defense on behalf of three torture victims, including San 
Francisco high school teacher Carlos Mauricio, who attended the hearing in 
Fresno on Tuesday.

Mauricio said he hoped the hearing would represent the beginning of "an end 
to impunity" for human rights violators.

With no defense team to rebut the evidence, Wanger heard the plaintiff's 
dramatic case, which included slides of Romero's mangled body crumpled on 
the chapel floor and an audio tape of the archbishop's last words, 
punctuated by the explosion of gunfire.

As Romero's voice resounded through the wood-paneled courtroom, clusters of 
Salvadorans in the audience wept quietly.

"The pain is still there," said Maria Pereira, a San Jose businesswoman who 
journeyed to Fresno with her family to attend the hearing. "Two months 
after Monsignor's death, I lost a nephew, 19 years old. The army took him 
away and we never heard from him again. Romero's death was the most 
significant for the country, but it was one of many thousands."

To Nora Sotelo-Kury of San Francisco, and many others, the assassination of 
the archbishop signified that the Salvadoran military and affiliated death 
squads would stop at nothing to terrorize the country into submission.

"Here was this man who was the saint of the Americas, the voice of the 
voiceless," she said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. "If they could 
murder Monsignor Romero, they could do whatever they wanted."

U.S. church leaders and former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White, 
who gave a video deposition that was played in court, were among the 
witnesses who testified about the importance of Romero's life and the 
impact of his death.

"I felt Oscar Romero was perhaps the only person who could serve as a 
bridge between the rich and the poor," said White. "Had Romero lived, it's 
quite possible we could have avoided the civil war because he could channel 
popular discontent into more constructive channels."

In addition, Amado Antonio Garay, who said he had worked as a driver for 
Saravia, testified that Saravia was closely linked to Maj. Roberto 
D'Aubuisson, who was later identified by a United Nations truth commission 
as the mastermind of Romero's killing. D'Aubuisson died of cancer in 1992.

Garay testified that Saravia instructed him to drive the sniper to the 
chapel, stop while the man fired, then drive him away again. He said he 
later heard Saravia tell D'Aubuisson, "mission accomplished."

Wanger is not expected to issue a judgment for several weeks after the 
conclusion of the trial.

E-mail Tyche Hendricks at 
<mailto:thendricks at sfchronicle.com>thendricks at sfchronicle.com.



<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/08/25//cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/08/25/state0321EDT0024.DTL>Details 
of Salvadoran archbishop's death emerge in civil case
- JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, August 25, 2004

(08-25) 00:21 PDT FRESNO, Calif. (AP) --

Details of the death of an archbishop revered in Latin America for his 
defense of human rights emerged during the first day of a civil case in 
Fresno federal court against a retired Salvadoran Air Force captain.

The suit alleges that Alvaro Rafael Saravia, the right-hand man of San 
Salvador's conservative mayor at the time, conspired to kill the archbishop 
in March of 1980. It alleges the archbishop's death was an extrajudicial 
killing, a crime against humanity and a violation of international law and 
of federal statutes, the plaintiff's lawyers argued Tuesday.

Saravia, a Modesto resident who has been linked to the archbishop's death 
by independent United Nations investigations has not hired any attorneys, 
or responded to the lawsuit filed by the San Francisco-based Center for 
Justice and Accountability on behalf of one of Archbishop Oscar Romero's 
relatives.

The suit seeks to determine Saravia's liability, and to assess monetary 
damages, but attorneys on the case, and several Salvadorans attending the 
trial, said the real purpose of this hearing is to set the historical 
record straight.

"This is a validation for us, that this didn't go unseen," said Cecilia 
Contreras, a native of San Salvador who came to the trial with her mother 
and her four children. "It was a crime, he was shot, but the victims were 
all the people of El Salvador."

The case continues Wednesday with testimony by Atilio Ramirez Amaya, the 
Salvadoran judge initially assigned to investigate this case. Ramirez Amaya 
had to abandon the case after he suffered death threats, and was forced to 
flee the country with his family.

A deposition from Robert White, who was the American ambassador in El 
Salvador at the time of the killing, will also be heard, along with a 
deposition from a witness whose name remains confidential for security 
reasons.

The hearing will end Friday.

On March 24, 1980, in an afternoon mass so crowded some attendants remained 
outside listening to loudspeakers, Romero remembered the violent death of a 
peasant who had been organizing other workers, testified Rev. William 
Wipfler, an Episcopal priest who witnessed the killing.

As Romero consecrated the bread and the wine, raising them to the altar, a 
car pulled up in front of the chapel. Amado Garay worked for Saravia as a 
chauffeur, and was driving the car.

Garay cried several times during the deposition. He testified he could hear 
the priest's words as the car stopped, but said he did not know who the 
priest was yet .

He did know that the man he was transporting at Saravia's request was 
carrying a long rifle with a telescopic lens. Garay testified that as he 
crouched in the car, the man in his back seat fired one single shot into 
the church, then told him to drive away.

When he returned the sniper to the house where Saravia was waiting, Garay 
said they found Saravia listening to the news.

"Saravia said to the shooter, 'I think you killed him. The news said he 
died instantly,"' Garay testified.

About one month later, fearing for his life, Garay escaped to Nicaragua, 
and eventually to the United States.

This was a crime that was well documented -- there are sound recordings, 
photos, and dozens of witnesses, and yet no one has been held accountable 
for this death, said the plaintiff's counsel, Nico Van Aeltstyn. The name 
of the plaintiff remains confidential. Judge Oliver Wanger agreed the fear 
of retaliation, even 24 years after the crime, is still too great.

Outrage over Romero's death grew as headlines announced the crime in 
newspapers around the world. About 100,000 people attended the archbishop's 
funeral, Aeltstyn said.

But attempts to take this case to court in El Salvador were repeatedly 
defeated. The party founded by then-mayor Roberto D'Aubuisson, who was 
linked by a U.N. truth commission to Romero's murder, is still in power in 
El Salvador. A general amnesty law prevents anyone involved in Romero's 
death and in thousands of others to face trial.

With the archbishop's death, there were no more avenues for a peaceful 
resolution of the conflict between the extreme right and the leftist forces 
in the country, and El Salvador descended into a bloody civil war that left 
75,000 dead, historians have said.



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