Murders El Salvador

Vice President Dan Quayle's trip here last month to demand that the government end human rights violations or face the loss of American aid has had almost no impact, with the number of killings actually increasing since his visit, according to diplomats and human rights groups. In the month before the vice president's February trip, the number of civilian deaths attributed to death squads and the military was eight. However, since Feb.

In a case that revisited U.S. involvement in Central America's bloody civil wars, a federal jury on Friday found that two retired Salvadoran generals could not be held responsible for the 1980 rape and murder of four American churchwomen. The verdict by a 10-member jury in West Palm Beach drew gasps of disbelief from the slain women's relatives, who have tried for years to hold the two men liable for the killings carried out by Salvadoran national guardsmen under their command.

U.S. military autopsies show conclusively that two American soldiers were "murdered in cold blood . . . executed" by Salvadoran guerrillas after they had survived a crash-landing of their helicopter, U.S. Ambassador William G. Walker said Saturday.

Under pressure from domestic and international courts, Atty. Gen. Belisario Artiga announced Wednesday that he will investigate a former president and other public officials to determine whether they ordered the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. "We are asking [the court] for permission to investigate as masterminds former President Alfredo Cristiani and high-ranking military officers in the murder of the Jesuit priests," Artiga told reporters.

Rightist political leaders Wednesday angrily vowed to retaliate against President Jose Napoleon Duarte for accusing former Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson of ordering the 1980 murder of the Archbishop of San Salvador. The rightists said they will "fight to the ultimate consequences" to defend D'Aubuisson, who is founder and honorary president of their National Republican Alliance (Arena) Party. "Duarte is talking about peace, but he is provoking war," said former army Col. Sigifredo Ochoa Perez.

Almost a year after El Salvador's decade-old civil war ended with fanfare and high hopes, a U.N.-brokered peace is in danger of crumbling amid mounting political violence, deepening fear and delays in promised reforms. With this country's most important elections ever looming on the horizon, a resurgence of death squad-style killings has sent a chill of tension and anger throughout much of Salvadoran society.

A Salvadoran army call for a cease-fire in the country's nine-year civil war was answered Wednesday by Marxist guerrilla bombs, bullets and hard words. Within hours after the army had said it was suspending all offensive operations as of midnight Tuesday until June 1, units of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front struck at several military and civilian targets.

In an address last Friday to a hastily assembled group of priests and rabbis at St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Encino, the best-known of the surviving Jesuits of El Salvador provided grim, previously unreported details about the murders that may have changed the course of the war in El Salvador.

A right-wing politician who was a former president of the Salvadoran Supreme Court was gunned down in his car at a busy intersection Tuesday. Francisco Jose Guerrero, 64, a leader of the conservative National Conciliation Party, was ambushed at mid-morning and shot in the chest, according to army and hospital officials. He died minutes later at a local hospital.

The well-connected father and grandfather of a 9-year-old girl who was raped and killed were arrested Wednesday in a shocking case that has pitted wife against husband and outraged even violence-ridden El Salvador. Carlos Miranda, 58, a former lawyer for the once-powerful treasury police, is accused of raping and killing his granddaughter, Kathya, during an overnight stay at the family's beach property in April.

Stopped by national guardsmen at a rural roadblock, the women were abducted, raped and murdered, each executed with a rifle shot to the head. The December 1980 killings of Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan took place near the start of El Salvador's 12-year civil war, a conflict in which more that 75,000 civilians died. Nearly two decades after the deaths put a U.S.

The well-connected father and grandfather of a 9-year-old girl who was raped and killed were arrested Wednesday in a shocking case that has pitted wife against husband and outraged even violence-ridden El Salvador. Carlos Miranda, 58, a former lawyer for the once-powerful treasury police, is accused of raping and killing his granddaughter, Kathya, during an overnight stay at the family's beach property in April.

At 17, Gustavo Adolfo Morales is a legend--the hero of a rap song banned from the radio airwaves and the symbol of a lost generation. He has been convicted of murdering six people in a two-year reign of terror as a youth gang leader in this sweltering city in eastern El Salvador. Police suspect that he actually killed 17 people in all, but proving his guilt in the other 11 crimes would be academic.

Two U.S. lawmakers urged the administration Thursday to release documents that could aid a wrongful death lawsuit against two retired Salvadoran military officers, now living in Florida, who are accused of involvement in the killings of four American women in 1980. "Nineteen years is too long for anyone to wait for the truth about their loved ones' deaths," Reps. John Joseph Moakley and James P. McGovern, both Massachusetts Democrats, wrote in a letter to President Clinton.

Still professing his innocence, a third national guardsman convicted of raping and killing four American churchwomen in El Salvador walked free from prison as church leaders worried that the truth in the case may never be known. Daniel Canales has admitted being at the murder scene but has insisted he did not participate. Canales said the guardsmen who committed the Dec. 2, 1980, murders "were executing orders of superiors."

Sparking new controversy in one of the most publicized cases in the prolonged, costly U.S. involvement in Central America's civil wars, Salvadoran authorities on Tuesday authorized the parole of three of the five soldiers convicted of killing four American religious women in 1980. Luis Antonio Colindres, the sub-segeant who first confessed to the slayings, and Jose Roberto Moreno Canjura walked free after serving 17 years of their 30-year murder sentences.

Waving signs with slogans such as "Decaf the death squads," about 100 activists rallied at Long Beach Harbor on Sunday to stop union dockworkers from unloading 34 tons of Salvadoran coffee beans from a Colombian freighter. It was the fourth time this month that the vessel, the Ciudad de Buenaventura, has docked at a West Coast port but been unable to shed its controversial cargo because of protests.

As El Salvador prepares for the first time to try a top army officer for murder, a caustic dispute between an order of the Roman Catholic Church and the American Embassy over important elements of the proceedings convinces many that the full truth behind the country's most infamous human rights case will never be uncovered. "The Case," as it's popularly called here, is the forthcoming trial of Col.

A judge ordered conditional freedom for three of five national guardsmen convicted of killing four U.S. religious workers in 1980. The release had been expected after a new law to reduce prison overcrowding took effect in April. Judge Gloria Platero said Daniel Canales Ramirez, Jose Roberto Moreno Canjura and Luis Colindres were eligible for immediate parole because, when time for good behavior is calculated, they have served two-thirds of their 30-year sentences.

In a disturbing twist to one of the most publicized, controversial cases linked with the long and costly U.S. involvement in Central America's civil wars, five soldiers convicted of killing four American religious women in 1980 will be freed from prison any day now, judicial sources said Wednesday. The soldiers are eligible for parole under the provisions of a Salvadoran penal code, which took effect Monday, that lets prisoners with good conduct be released after completing half their sentences.