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Ex-Salvadoran generals face Palm Beach trial for nuns' deaths 

By KARIN MEADOWS, Associated Press 

WEST PALM BEACH - Five soldiers were convicted in the abduction, rape and slayings of three American nuns and a social worker in El Salvador in 1980, but the missionaries' families want others to pay. 

For years, the families of Sisters Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel and social worker Jean Donovan pushed Salvadoran and U.S. officials to probe deeper into the killings, sure that high-ranking officials of the Salvadoran National Guard knew of the murders. 

Now, they have a chance to prove they are right. 

On Tuesday, the families' wrongful death lawsuit against El Salvador's former defense minister, Jose Guillermo Garcia, and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, former director-general of the Salvadoran National Guard, goes on trial in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach. 

Family members like Bill Ford, Ita Ford's brother, will see face-to-face the two men he believes ultimately responsible for the death of his sister and the other missionaries. The families are not seeking specific monetary damages. 

"These two generals, at the time of the murders, controlled the Salvadoran military, which was a very top down organization," said Ford, a New York City lawyer. "I've been to El Salvador eight or nine times and no one believes five low-ranking guardsmen would take it upon themselves to kill four North American church women. There were clearly higher orders." 

Garcia, who moved to Florida in 1989 as did Casanova, denies the ordering the slayings. Now living in Plantation, a Fort Lauderdale suburb, he says he asked the FBI to aid in the investigation that led to the five convictions. It has already been established that the five soldiers were responsible, Garcia has said. 

Efforts to reach Casanova, who lives near Daytona Beach, were unsuccessful. A lawyer for both men, Kurt R. Klaus Jr. of Coral Gables, did not return telephone calls to his office. 

But the families believe the killings were part of a campaign to silence sympathizers of El Salvador's leftist guerrillas. The targets included church members critical of the military-led government and its actions during the 12-year civil war that began in 1979. 

The families didn't learn the Salvadoran generals were in the United States until 1999, 10 years after they gained entry into the country. That's when they filed a civil lawsuit that claims the murders of the women were ordered, then covered up by high-ranking military leaders. 

"When we discovered they were in Florida that gave us jurisdiction," said Robert Varenik of the Lawyers Committee For Human Rights, a New York City nonprofit group that has represented the families for 20 years. "It also added insult to injury in that the men who had been linked through the years to so many human rights injuries were in the United States." 

The victims - Ford, 40, and Clarke, 51, both of New York; Kazel, 42, and Donavan, 32, both of Cleveland - worked at a Catholic refugee center in the Central American country. 

They were detained by soldiers at a road block on Dec. 2, 1980 and the next day their raped and bullet-ridden bodies were discovered along a dirt road. 

Though five members of the Salvadoran National Guard were convicted in the killings in 1984 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, the families still don't believe the case was fully investigated. 

In March 1998, four of the convicted guardsmen confessed that they had been acting on orders from their superiors. Subsequently, two guardsmen and their commanding sergeant were released on parole. 

In order to win, lawyers for the families of the deceased must show the generals had knowledge of a policy or pattern of abuse by soldiers and didn't stop the violence, Varenik said. 

Still, the case isn't just about four American women whose lives were taken at the hands of an army, but about the "tens of thousands of Salvadoran victims murdered by the men the defendants' commanded," Varenik said. 

"As you can imagine, generals don't often leave fingerprints on triggers. Somebody several levels below them does," Varenik said. 

Also in today's Florida section:
Bahamian officials intercept 150 Haitians on 45-foot boat
Bicycle trail over Interstate 4 will be car-free
Border town angry over relocating Florida title companies
Castro to Mexico and uncertain future for Cuba-Mexico relations
Crucial Florida school tests plagued with election-like errors
Election 2000: Boca congressman, other recount participants get death threats
Election 2000: Chairman: Palm Beach recount would have given Gore some 220 votes
Election 2000: Gore pleas case before nation; Bush builds Cabinet in private
Election 2000: Gore's announcement doesn't surprise local politicians
Election 2000: How the troops were mobilized for the recount
Election 2000: Jeb Bush working with legislators to assure brother's victory
Election 2000: King named state Senate majority leader
Election 2000: Quietly but confidently, Bush pushes ahead
Election 2000: Sharpton files suit against Bush, Harris over Florida recount
Ex-POW says raid 30 years ago not all in vain
Florida man seeks help in retrieving son in Cuba
Jury selection begins in trial of five alleged Cuban spies
North Korean pilot who defected with MiG realizes American dream
Settlement reached in legal dispute over shark fishing
Thousands demand trial for exiled Cuban accuses of terrorism

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