The Court of First Instance of Chinameca, San Miguel, ordered the national and international persecution of the three former guerrillas accused of shooting down a helicopter in which three soldiers of the United States Air Force were traveling on January 2, 1991, one year before the signing of the Peace Agreements in Chapultepec Castle.
The order was sent to the International Police (INTERPOL) by Judge Dinora del Carmen Andrade de Lazo, according to the publication of Diario El Mundo.
He also asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the US embassy in El Salvador, to contact the next of kin of the victims to inform them of the present and coming judicial processes.
The note, signed by the journalist Juan Carlos Vásquez, also indicates that the judge ordered the National Records Center (CNR) to seize the property against which the accused may own.
In the publication, the judge assures that the judicial file is strongly protected. He has even asked for two safes for that.
According to the Truth Commission report, the crime occurred in the 1990s when a UH-1H US Air Force helicopter was manned by the military David H. Pickett, Ernest Dawson and the pilot Daniel Scott and was shot down by three guerrillas belonging to the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), one of the five organizations that integrated the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).
The demolition occurred in the San Francisco canton of Lolotique, San Miguel.
When the gringos military fell to the ground, they were still alive, according to publications of Diario El Mundo of the 1990s. The locals came to try to help them and left them alone to go get them water.
At that moment they heard shots and when they returned they found them dead.
The most widespread version is that they were executed. Those responsible for the execution are presumed to be Fernán Fernández Arévalo, aka Porfirio; Santos Guevara Portillo, Sunday; and Severiano Fuentes, Aparicio.
At that time the three were members of the ERP. The top managers of the organization, at that time, were Joaquín Villalobos, Ana Guadalupe Martínez, among others.
The investigations of the Truth Commission concluded that it was the execution of two wounded. That violates the international laws of war and can be considered a crime against humanity.
The case, like other years of the Civil War, is being judged according to the rules of the 1973 Criminal Code, that is, the judge is responsible for collecting the evidence and the prosecutor only serves as support.
On February 8, 2017, the Collective of Victims of Terrorism in El Salvador filed two complaints with the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to investigate the massacre of four US Marines in the Zona Rosa, on June 19, 1985, and the demolition of the helicopter in Lolotique.
In the complaint, the Collective asks that former President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, Villalobos, Nidia Díaz, Francisco Jovel, Jorge Meléndez and other former leaders of the ex-insurgency be investigated as responsible.
The brief was presented after the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) declared the Amnesty Law illegal, which covered crimes committed during the war with impunity.
The magistrates annulled the validity of that law on July 13, 2016.
Five months later Douglas Meléndez, then attorney general, announced that the prosecution had issued arrest warrants against the three accused of murdering the US military in Lolotique.
Source: Diario1
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