Small Vote for Democracy : Verdict in Jesuit murders offers hope for El Salvador

Very troubling questions remain about the coldblooded murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador two years ago. But the unprecedented murder conviction of the colonel who ordered the killings is a major achievement for courageous people both inside and outside that war-torn country who demanded justice in this brutal and shocking case.

Although he was not present when elite troops under his command executed the priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides was found guilty of ordering the killings. A lieutenant was convicted of murdering the housekeeper’s daughter. Another officer and five enlisted men were found not guilty, although four of the soldiers had confessed to being the gunmen who carried out the executions.

The mixed outcome is not wholly satisfactory, but it does mark the first time in memory that a Salvadoran officer has been convicted of a human rights violation. This during 12 years of often brutal civil war; and the Salvadoran courts were not exactly bastions of evenhanded justice during the 50 years before that, an era in which the military acted as a virtual private army for a small oligarchy.

That’s why it is encouraging that a solitary judge and jury (the identify of the five members was, tellingly, kept secret) were able to muster the courage to convict a man with personal ties to the most powerful military men in El Salvador.

Is El Salvador becoming a more democratic nation? One signal will be whether President Alfredo Cristiani’s government now summons the courage to follow through on allegations that Benavides was not the only high-ranking military man who knew about the killings beforehand or who tried to cover them up afterward. One just verdict does not make a just society.