NORTH CAROLINA – The U.S. wants to extradite a former Salvadoran military officer to Spain to face charges for participating in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador during the 10-year civil conflict, officials.
The Jesuit priests’ housekeeper and the housekeeper’s 16-year old daughter were also killed, according to authorities.
Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, 72, formerly of Everett, Massachusetts, and 19 other former Salvadoran military officials were indicted in Spain
According to allegations in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court Wednesday, these are the facts and circumstances surrounding this case:
Between 1980 and 1991, El Salvador was engulfed in a civil conflict between the military-led government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front or FMLN.
During this conflict, in the early morning hours of Nov. 16, 1989, members of the Salvadoran military allegedly murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and the housekeeper’s 16-year old daughter at the Universidad Centroamericana.
Five of the Jesuit priests were Spanish nationals, and the remaining victims were from El Salvador.
The Jesuit priests were allegedly advocates for discussions between the FMLN and the military-led government to end the strife.
At the time, Montano Morales was a colonel in the Salvadoran army, and he also served as Vice Minister of Defense and Public Safety.
The complaint alleges that he shared oversight responsibility over a government radio station that, days before the massacre, issued threats urging the murder of the Jesuit priests.
The day before the murders, Montano Morales also allegedly participated in a series of meetings during which one of his fellow officers gave the order to kill the leader of the Jesuits and leave no witnesses.
The following day, members of the Salvadoran army allegedly executed the six priests, their housekeeper and the housekeeper’s daughter.
Days earlier, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) had launched a major offensive against the military in San Salvador. Father Ignacio Ellacuría had tried to negotiate a peace deal involving the ouster of top military officers.
The Huffington Post reported that Fathers Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno and Amando López were led in pajamas to their outdoor courtyard and told to lie in the grass. As Martha Doggett recounted in her book, “Death Foretold: The Jesuit Murders in El Salvador,” a neighbor reportedly heard the priests murmuring prayers in unison before they were shot.
Indoors, soldiers shot Father Joaquín López y López, along with the priests’ housekeeper, Elba Ramos, and her 16-year-old daughter Celina. Soldiers later testified they returned to fire again at the two women who were moaning and embracing on the floor, the Huffington Post reported.
Before leaving, battalion members fired an anti-tank rocket and grenades and shot bullets into the pastoral center. They spray-painted slogans onto the walls of the gate in an attempt to implicate the country’s leftist guerillas: “The FMLN executed the enemy spies. Victory or Death, FMLN, ” the Huffington Post reported.
Montano Morales is currently serving a 21-month federal prison sentence in the United States for his 2013 conviction in Massachusetts for immigration fraud and perjury in connection with false statements he made to immigration authorities to remain in the U.S., authorities stated.
He will be released from that prison sentence on April 16.
