El Salvador orders massacre probe

Press, 29 August 1984, Page 10

El Salvador orders massacre probe

NZPA-Reuter San Salvador El Salvador’s Army high command has ordered a full investigation into an alleged massacre of 68 peasants last month by a United Statestrained army unit, according to military officials. The investigation, believed to be the first such military probe, was ordered yesterday by the Defence Minister, Mr Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, after he read a report by the Catholic Church’s human rights monitoring arm, Tutela Legal. The church group investigated reports of a mass killing in the northern Cabanas province and said troops of the elite United States-trained Atlacatl Battalion shot dead 68 peasants in a “search and destroy operation” between July 18 and 22 in three villages about 40km north of San Salvador.

Military officials said the

Army investigation was initiated at the request of President Jose Napoleon Duarte, who has said he first learned of the incident at a press conference during the week-end. The probe would be led by Colonel Joel Rivas, an administrative assistant to the Defence Minister, they said. Western diplomats welcomed the investigation, a rare event in the country, but added that military probes into lesser abuses of authority in the past had seldom produced results. Last week, a Defence Ministry spokesman said the Army haa looked into reports of bombings against the civilian population in Cabanas and found they were “negative”. Accusations of an Army attack against civilians were a "propaganda campaign against the armed forces,” he said.

Human rights groups say the Atlacatl Battalion has been responsible for a string of peasant massacres, most notably the killing of about 500 peasants in the village of El Mozote in north-east-ern Morazan province in late 1981. There was no Army investigation of the Mozote incident. The probe into the Cabanas massacre reports comes less than two days after Mr Duarte announced the formation of a special commission to investigate a number of killings in the last four years; including another reported Army massacre in western El Salvador and the murder of the Salvadorean, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, in 1980. Mr Duarte promised before taking office nearly three months ago to investigate every report of abuse of authority that was made available to him.