El Salvador Faces Dilemma over the Prosecution of War Criminals

El Salvador Faces Dilemma over the Prosecution of War Criminals

By Edgardo Ayala

SAN SALVADOR, Jul 23 2016 (IPS) - The ruling of the highest court to repeal the amnesty law places El Salvador in the dilemma of deciding whether the country should prosecute those who committed serious violations to human rights during the civil war. It also evidences that, more than two decades after the end of the conflict in 1992, reconciliation is proving elusive in this Central American country with 6.3 million inhabitants.

At the heart of the matter is the pressing need to bring justice to the victims of war crimes while, on the other hand, it implies a huge as well as difficult task, since it will entail opening cases that are more than two decades old, involving evidence that has been tampered or lost, if at all available, and witnesses who have already died.

Those who oppose opening such cases highlight the precarious condition of the judiciary, which has important inadequacies and is cluttered with a plethora of unsentenced cases.

“I believe Salvadorans as a whole, the population and the political forces are not in favour of this (initiating prosecution), they have turned the page”, pointed out left-wing analyst Salvador Samayoa, one of the signatory parties of the Peace Agreements that put an end to 12 years of civil war.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/07/el-salvador-faces-dilemma-over-the-prosecution-of-war-criminals/

What a shame the right-wing US-supported power structure could find a way to avoid trying the war criminals all this time so they could side-step ever facing their atrocities against the people of El Salvador. Remember, that the right-wing of El Salvador is very tight with prominent Republicans here, like Romney. Downright hideous.