Trial of soldiers opens

Press, 25 May 1984, Page 6

Trial of soldiers opens

NZPA-‘N.Y. Times’Zacatecoluca, El Salvador

The trial of five former National Guardsmen charged in the killings of four American churchwomen in 1980 opened yesterday. The presiding judge said that the evidence was strong enough to result in a guilty verdict from the five jurors.

“It’s clear that they will arrive at a guilty verdict after hearing the evidence,” said Judge Bernardo Rauda Murcia. “But in these things sometimes the verdict is prevented because the jury takes pity or is afraid/

The two women and three men on the jury, who will be given protection for two weeks after the trial, were expected to listen to evidence and arguments by the lawyers before being excused today to reach a verdict.

Judge Rauda has 15 days after the verdict is returned to sentence the five defendants, who could receive up to 30 years in prison for each killing. The new Constitution outlaws the death penalty.

The trial of the five former Guardsmen has become the focus of Congressional frustration with the Salvadorean Government’s progress in human rights. Congress voted last year to withhold SUSI 9 million ($29.2 million) in military aid to El Salvador until a verdict was reached in the trial.

The jurors will hear evidence including the confession and ballistic and fingerprint tests that indicate that the five Guardsmen picked up the four churchwomen on the afternoon of December 2, 1980, and killed them in the early evening. The four churchwomen were Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, both Maryknoll nuns; Sister Dorothy Kazel, an Ursaline nun, and Jean Donovan, a Catholic lay worker. The five Guardsmen charged in the killings are sergeants.