Salvadoran generals found guilty in torture
victims lawsuit
By MARIANNE ARMSHAW
West Palm Beach, Fla.
More than 20 years after enduring beatings, rapes and other
horrific abuses, three Salvadoran-born torture survivors found justice in a
U.S. courtroom. A federal jury found retired generals José Guillermo
García and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova liable for the torture
inflicted by security forces they commanded during El Salvadors bitter
12-year civil war.
The historic verdict marks the first time a U.S. court has held a
commander responsible under the Torture Victims Protection Act for atrocities
committed on his watch, according to Sandra Colliver, who heads the Center for
Justice and Accountability. The San Francisco-based center filed the suit in
1999 and worked with the trio of lawyers who fought the case before U.S. Judge
Daniel Hurley.
This verdict confirms that both U.S. citizens and aliens can
sue for torture and extrajudicial killings. This is about justice,
Colliver said.
The 10-member jury spent 20 often contentious hours deliberating
before ordering the generals to pay $54.6 million to plaintiffs Juan Romagoza,
Neris González and Carlos Mauricio, said jury foreman Arnie Esbin.
We had some terrible times, said Esbin, a semi-retired
newspaper editor. There was some yelling, screaming and crying.
García served as El Salvadors defense minister from
1979 to 1983. Vides Casanova reported to him as director of the notoriously
brutal National Guard before succeeding García in the top military post
in the U.S.-backed government that fought leftist guerillas from 1980 to
1992.
Both generals have lived in Florida since 1989; García was
granted political asylum when he claimed he received death threats in El
Salvador. He and Vides are now permanent legal residents. Gonzalez, Romagoza
and Mauricio all fled to the United States after surviving torture between 1979
and 1983.
The generals were not present in court when the verdict was
published, nor was Romagoza, who was flying back to Florida from his home in
Washington when the verdict came in. González and Mauricio clutched
hands with attorney Beth Van Schaack and wept as each guilty verdict was read.
At least two jurors cried. González, tears streaming down her face, blew
kisses to the jury and mouthed, Thank you, thank you. Audible sobs
erupted from the packed courtroom as spectators hugged each other.
The case hinged on whether the generals knew or should have known
of the abuse and acted to prevent or punish it, a legal concept known as
command responsibility. Defense attorney Kurt Klaus had argued that
the generals were not responsible for the acts of rogue troops during a civil
war that plunged the country into chaos and said the outcome left him
disappointed.
The only people who know what really happened in [the
torture chambers] are the people who were there. And we dont even know
who actually committed the torture, Klaus said.
The generals never contested that the torture occurred, though
they repeated used the term supuesto or
supposedly when their testimony referred to the torture. They have
repeatedly maintained their innocence and testified they actually worked hard
to prevent human rights abuses on their watch.
The generals were found not liable in a similar case in October
2000 for the notorious 1980 rape, torture and murder of four American
missionaries: Maryknoll Srs. Ita Ford and Maura Clark, Ursuline Sr. Dorothy
Kazel and lay worker Jean Donovan. Five low-ranking National Guardsmen were
convicted of those murders in El Salvador; at least one claims to have acted
under orders.
The difference lay in having live torture survivors instead
of four dead women tell their stories to the jury, according to
plaintiffs attorney James Green.
Three jurors wept as González told of being a church
volunteer educating poor farmers when National Guardsmen raped and beat her in
1979. Though she was eight months pregnant, her abusers placed a metal bed
frame over her pregnant belly and seesawed on top of her, then gang-raped her
nightly in a room where The Human Slaughterhouse was painted on the
door in blood. Her infant son was born prematurely and died of his injuries.
Jurors awarded her $21.5 million.
I am happy, so very happy, González told
reporters outside the courtroom. The money is nice but its not the
most important thing. It is knowing that now we have justice.
Mauricio, a professor of agriculture, was kidnapped in 1983 and
blindfolded, strung up by his arms and beat for eight days in a cell at the
national police headquarters in San Salvador, where he was accused of being a
subversive. He suffered permanent vision damage from the beatings and was
awarded $13.1 million.
This is amazing, this is just fantastic. This could never
have happened in my country, said Mauricio of the verdict. El Salvador
granted a general amnesty as part of the 1992 peace settlement that ended the
war. No Salvadoran officer has ever been tried for war crimes in that
country.
Romagoza testified that Vides Casanova visited the cell where he
was beaten and tortured with electric shocks for 24 days in 1980. Soldiers
wrapped wires tightly around his fingers to cut off circulation, robbing the
surgeon of the ability to operate. His torture occurred in the San
Salvadors National Guard headquarters -- about 100 feet from Vides
office. Romagoza received an award of $20 million in damages.
The awards include compensation for the suffering the trio endured
and punitive damages designed to punish the generals. Attorney Kurt Klaus, who
successfully defended the generals in the 2000 case, said the men lack the
funds to either pay the claims against them or appeal the verdict.
They have nothing. García lives with his kids.
Vides wife still works, Klaus said. The generals did not respond to
requests for interviews, but García told The Miami Herald he
would have to win the lottery to pay the damages. He testified that
he lives with a daughter in Plantation, Fla., his only income a $700 monthly
pension from the Salvadoran military. Before each case, Klaus advised the
generals to flee the country rather than defend the charges.
Attorney James Green, one of three lawyers to bring the case
against the generals, said he plans to delve into the generals
finances.
Going after the money, thats the next step,
Green said. Attorneys will review any steps the generals may have taken to hide
assets.
Reports from El Salvador say the current government is not pleased
with the verdict. The vice president of El Salvador issued a statement
saying leave these things be, let it go, said Richard Krieger, who runs
the International Educational Mission in Boynton Beach, Fla. That organization
tracks some of the 1,100 suspected human rights violators living in the United
States, included García and Vides Casanova.
Id like to see them sent back to El Salvador,
Krieger said.
A former State Department official hailed the verdict. I
think its a terrific victory, said Princeton Lyman, who spent 37
years in the Agency for International Development and the State Department.
It shows that the U.S. wont be sanctuary for people like this. They
cant get here and live a nice life and have no way for the law to reach
them.
For Abraham Sofear, legal adviser on international law to
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and now a professor at Stanford
University, the verdict confirms what the U.S. government believed during the
Salvadoran civil war, which left 75,000 Salvadorans dead, most of them unarmed
civilians.
There was strong of suspicion that a lot of bad stuff was
going on there. Our own ambassador [Edwin Corr] said that the generals would
have had to be blind and deaf not to know what was going on, Sofear
said.
Corr volunteered as a defense witness in both cases, arguing that
the generals could not control troops given the chaotic state of El Salvador, a
country the size of Massachusetts. However, Corr did not arrive in El Salvador
until 1985, when García had already been gone for nearly two years.
Marianne Armshaw is a writer and photographer living in
Florida.
National Catholic Reporter, August 2,
2002
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