Expelling Salvadoran human rights abusers
Former General Eugenio Vides Casanova was deported this week from the US, and arrived in El Salvador on a plane full of other Salvadorans who US authorities were deporting. An article today in The Independent describes the legal proceedings in the US, which led to the former general's inglorious return to El Salvador after living in the US since 1989. He will be able to live freely in El Salvador, protected by a 1993 Amnesty Law which blocked prosecutions for crimes committed during El Salvador's civil war.
Groups of protesters, representing victims of human rights abuses committed by troops under Vides Casanova's command, were at the airport to denounce ongoing impunity in El Salvador.
In other news, the US announced that it wants to extradite to Spain former Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano, one of 20 former military officers being tried in a Spanish court for their roles in the 1989 killing of the Jesuits. Montano had been imprisoned on immigration charges in the US following conviction for lying on his papers when he originally entered the US.
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