El Salvador Justice: Three Ex-Military Officers Convicted for 1982 Murder of Dutch Journalists

In a landmark ruling, three former officers from the Salvadoran military were convicted of murdering four Dutch journalists in 1982. The trial, which lasted just ten hours, emphasized the need for accountability and justice after decades of evasion by the government.

A jury in El Salvador has convicted three former senior military officers for their involvement in the 1982 murders of four Dutch television journalists during the Salvadoran civil war, as announced by the Comunicándonos Foundation, an organization advocating for justice. The convicted are General José Guillermo García, former defense minister at 91, Colonel Francisco Morán, former police director at 93, and Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, each receiving a 15-year prison sentence. The trial spanned about ten hours and also condemned the Salvadoran government for extending the resolution of the case for over four decades.

García and Morán remain in detention following their arrests in 2022, while Reyes Mena awaits extradition from Virginia, as confirmed by the Dutch government. The four Dutch journalists — Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Joop Willemsen, and Hans ter Laag — were working for a now-defunct broadcaster and were ambushed by Salvadoran soldiers on March 17, 1982, while traveling behind rebel lines.

Initially, the Salvadoran army claimed the deaths resulted from guerrilla fire directed at an army patrol; however, a 1993 UN Truth Commission report revealed the army orchestrated the ambush and that Colonel Reyes Mena had ordered the killings from the United States. Eyewitness accounts and evidence from the ambush site support this conclusion, reporting that the journalists were shot at close range.

The news of the killings ignited outrage in the Netherlands, prompting a push for justice that has persisted for decades. In a pre-trial blog post, Dutch ambassador to Costa Rica and El Salvador, Arjen van den Berg, recounted the national fury over the incident, focusing on the unimaginable concept of a government killing journalists in cold blood.

Officials from the Netherlands expressed relief at the verdict, highlighting its significance in combating impunity and reinforcing the justice system for the victims’ families. "This is an important moment in the fight against impunity and in the pursuit of justice for the four Dutch journalists and their next of kin," wrote outgoing Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp on social media.