A Salvadoran judge has ordered the arrest of several retired military chiefs accused of partaking in the 1983 killings of four Dutch journalists who were covering the country’s civil war.

A ruling by Judge María Mercedes Arguello in Chalatenango province, seen by VOA,  names José Guillermo García, Colonel Francisco Antonio Morán, General Rafael Flores Lima, former chief of staff of the armed forces, who died on June 29, 2020, and Sergeant Mario Canizales, who has also died, as those responsible for the killings. 

Dutch News reported that Messrs Garcia and Morán appeared in a Chalatenango court on Monday.

Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, former commander of El Salvador’s Fourth Infantry Brigade, who currently resides in the United States, was also named in the ruling. The judge ordered that authorities begin an extradition process against him.

The victims’ families, envoys of the Dutch government and the European Union, had demanded in March that El Salvador hold accountable those responsible for the murders of Dutch television journalists Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemsen.

The killings occurred during El Salvador’s civil war between the government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

In a report on human rights violations during the war, the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, set up in 1992, said that the ambush was set up to kill the journalists and was ordered by Mr Mena.