On October 9, the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) filed a civil lawsuit in the United States against retired Salvadoran Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena for his role in the assassination of four Dutch journalists in Chalatenango 42 years ago, on Mar. 17, 1982. The complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia by Gert Kuiper, the brother of Jan Kuiper, who was murdered alongside three of his colleagues by the Salvadoran Army.
The killing of Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag, and Johannes Willemsen is, according to the U.N. Truth Commission, one of the most emblematic cases of grave human rights violations perpetrated during the Salvadoran civil war (1980-1992). The four journalists had arrived in El Salvador at the end of February 1982 as part of their coverage for Interkerkelijke Omroep Nederland (IKON), a Dutch television and radio station.
According to the U.N. report, the journalists were traveling to Chalatenango to cover the conflict, guided by members of the guerrilla organizations, when they were ambushed and executed by the Army. Five days prior to the attack, Kooster had been detained for hours and interrogated by the Treasury Police.
The lawsuit cites investigations by the U.S. Embassy on the evening of the assassinations and the following morning, which concluded that Reyes and other military leaders had planned to cover up the massacre by claiming that it had occurred during a firefight. But U.S. investigators found evidence that the only ones who had fired weapons at the scene had been members of the Army patrol.
The lawsuit states that in 1984, two years after the crime, Colonel Reyes Mena was transferred to the United States as military attaché of the Salvadoran government in Washington, D.C. The colonel went on to make regular visits to El Salvador through 2022.
That year, Trial Judge María Mercedes Argüello, of the Dulce Nombre de María District in Chalatenango, ordered the arrest of Reyes Mena and other former officials: Colonel Rafael Flores Lima, the former head of the Joint General Staff; Sergeant Mario Canizales Espinoza, of the Atlacatl Battalion; General Guillero García, the former minister of defense; and Colonel Francisco Antonio Morán, the former director of the defunct Treasury Police. These latter two men were arrested on Oct. 14, 2022 at their homes in San Salvador. According to Óscar Pérez, director of Fundación Comunicándonos, they are in custody at a private hospital. Comunicándonos is an organization that has closely worked with the CJA and has promoted the criminal investigation in the case of the Dutch journalists.
Reyes Mena continues to be a fugitive from Salvadoran justice. The complaint states that Reyes Mena’s trial in El Salvador “has been thwarted by Defendant’s cessation of travel to the country of his birth,” adding: “Nor is there any indication that extradition or removal to El Salvador will be prompt or even possible.”
CJA attorney Claret Vargas told El Faro English that the goal of the lawsuit is for Reyes Mena to at least face justice in a civil suit in the United States. “We are looking to take this to trial, obtain evidence, present the evidence that we already have, and achieve a declaration of the responsibility of Reyes Mena in this case.” A civil complaint seeks primarily economic reparations but, according to Vargas, this is a tool rather than a final objective.
The complaint requests that the court order compensation for harms, as well as measures of reparation such as the publication of a statement in which Reyes admits his responsibility for the crime. If the ruling is favorable, Pérez from Comunicándonos says it should give way to “a process for Reyes Mena to be deported.”
The civil suit could last between two to 18 months, Vargas said. In the short term, Reyes Mena and his attorneys are expected to motion for dismissal. “We are ready to counter those arguments, and if we pass that phase, the moment will come for the evidence to be revealed,” she added.
Gert Kuiper, 70, Jan’s younger brother, told El Faro that he felt optimistic about this “decisive phase” for the case. “That offers relief,” he said. “It has been a very long process and at times I have been concerned that we will not reach the end of it, especially now that almost all the family members of the reporters are elderly. There are relatives who are already 85 years old, and for them it is complicated to get more involved. They follow the case, but are not participating. I personally want to continue, even though it can be a little bothersome,” he said.
War criminals sheltered in the U.S.
The lawsuit attempts to follow the legal pathway set by a similar case, in which the defendants were two important military leaders at the beginning of the 1980s: Guillermo García, the former defense minister; and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, the ex-director of the Treasury Police, one of the security forces employed during the war.
García and Vides Casanova were found guilty of torture and human rights violations in a civil lawsuit in Florida in 2002. Both men were ordered to pay more than 54 million dollars to their Salvadoran victims who filed the U.S. suit, just as Kuiper has now done. After that verdict, the federal government hewed to a new law seeking to prevent the presence of human rights violators on U.S. soil in announcing it would open deportation proceedings against the two Salvadoran military leaders.
Both men were deported to El Salvador, in 2016 and 2015, respectively. García’s deportation order concluded that he was implicated in 11 war crimes, including the 1980 assassination of San Salvador Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, the 1981 massacre of around 1,000 campesinos in El Mozote, and the 1980 murder of four Maryknoll sisters from the United States.
In none of those cases are the judicial investigations as advanced as in that of the Dutch journalists. The former defense ministers were deported to El Salvador but were not immediately detained; on the other hand, Reyes Mena could be arrested due to the international arrest warrant issued in 2023.
In 2018, Dutch journalists from the investigative program Zembla found Reyes Mena residing in the United States. Vargas asserts that the Salvadoran colonel’s immigration status is yet to be determined. Zembla also revealed secret U.N. documents showing that Reyes Mena shared information on the operation with his fellow military leaders, as well as with Allen Bruce Hazelwood, a U.S. military advisor.
From the time they arrived in El Salvador, the Dutch journalists were pursued and surveilled by the Salvadoran Army due to their prior reporting, including interviews with the guerrilla organizations, documentation of state human rights abuses, and reports on government-supported death squads.
During the war, the Salvadoran Army intimidated and attacked local and foreign journalists whose coverage they deemed to be a threat.
Victims have faced obstacles to obtaining justice since the signing of peace in 1992. The Peace Accords created a Truth Commission to investigate the crimes committed during the war. In 1993, the Commission published its report. Five days later, the Legislative Assembly approved an amnesty law protecting war criminals from the Army and guerrillas. The law was in force until 2016, when the Constitutional Chamber struck it down and ordered the legislature to pass a new law. In 2020, President Nayib Bukele vetoed a bill proposed by right-wing parties led by Arena.
In May 2024, legislators from the ruling party Nuevas Ideas archived the transitional justice bill, leaving the judicial order of a new law unfulfilled eight years after the Constitutional Chamber’s ruling.
