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A former military commander of the Salvadoran Army who was linked to the killing of six Jesuit priests has been jailed in the United States.
Former Col. Inocente Orlando Montano was sentenced Tuesday by a federal court in Boston after he entered a guilty plea on charges of violating immigration laws.
Montano’s past as a military commander implicated in the slayings and a host of other atrocities figured prominently in prosecution arguments during his sentencing hearing.
Montano is one of 20 military leaders during El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s who was indicted in 2011 by a Spanish court on charges related to the killings of the priests.
The Spanish court asserted the doctrine of universal justice, which allows a court in one country to prosecute egregious atrocities committed in another.
The priests, five of whom were Spanish nationals, were killed along with their housekeeper and her young daughter. They were rousted from their beds by soldiers during a guerrilla offensive in the Salvadoran capital.
A national truth commission, as well as a United Nations investigation, later determined that the killings were ordered by El Salvador’s military leadership — and covered up by civilian officials — who accused the priests of sympathies with the rebels.
Two officers were eventually convicted in a Salvadoran court but then freed in a 1993 amnesty.
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Image: AP/LA Times
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