San Salvador. The hearing of a trial against eight former guerrillas accused of murdering a woman in 1989 ended this Tuesday in El Salvador amid criticism from NGOs, who denounce “misuse of the judicial system” to punish the environmental action of five of them.
The sentence of the first trial for crimes in the civil war (1980-1992) that comes to an end will be handed down this Friday. The prosecution expects that the accused will be sentenced to up to 36 years in prison, while the defense is confident that they will be acquitted.
“The trial ends against 8 subjects prosecuted for the murder of a woman during the armed conflict, which occurred in August 1989 in Santa Marta,” about 80 km northeast of San Salvador, the Prosecutor’s Office published on the X network.
The case was opened in January 2023 and the public hearing began on October 8 in the Sensuntepeque Sentencing Court in Cabañas, by virtue of the fact that an Amnesty Law that in 1993 forgave the crimes of the conflict was repealed in 2016.
The environmentalists are Teodoro Antonio Pacheco, Saúl Agustín Rivas, Miguel Ángel Gámez, Pedro Antonio Rivas and Alejandro Laínez, who make up an NGO that fought for the approval of a law that in 2017 prohibited metal mining in the country.
The other accused are Fidel Dolores Recinos, José Eduardo Sancho and Arturo Serrano. The last two are fugitives.
The eight were guerrillas from the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and, according to the prosecution, they killed María Inés Alvarenga because they considered her an “army informant.”
At the hearing, “sufficient and compelling evidence was presented to demonstrate the guilt of the accused,” stated the Prosecutor’s Office, but for the defense it was demonstrated that they did not commit the crime.
“We have been able to demonstrate that these people were not at the scene on the date of the events, and consequently, the only way out, if this is legal, is acquittal,” defense lawyer Pedro Cruz told the press.
The lawyer of the NGO Tutela Legal, Alejandro Díaz, told AFP that this is “a politicized and instrumentalized case by the government and the Prosecutor’s Office” and there was “a misuse of the judicial system” to punish activists who defend the environment. .
The Santa Marta Social Economic Development Association (ADES), the NGO to which the five belong, alleged that they are innocent and that they were put on trial for their work in defense of the environment.
“This situation confirms that this case has little or nothing to do with investigating an alleged war crime, but rather it is an instrumentalization of the judicial system to pursue environmental activism,” ADES stated in a statement.
Lawyer Díaz highlighted, in contrast, that three massacres perpetrated by the army in Santa Marta during the civil war, in which more than 500 unarmed civilians died, have not been investigated.
The civil war left about 75 thousand dead and more than 7 thousand missing.
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