Background
On December 2, 1980, Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan were abducted, raped and murdered in El Salvador. Kazel and Don0van had gone to the airport to meet Ford and Clarke, who were returning from a conference in Nicaragua. Five Salvadoran National Guardsmen wearing civilian clothes, and led by Subsergeant Luis Antonio Colindres Alemán, intercepted the churchwomen’s vehicle on the road from the airport and took them to a remote location where they raped and executed them.

Trial Began October 10, 2024
The families of the American churchwomen, with pro bono representation, filed a lawsuit in May 1999 naming two former Salvadoran officials for the wrongful deaths of their relatives. The complaint, filed under the Torture Victim Protection Act, alleges that Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and José Guillermo García were ultimately responsible for the 1980 murders. They were, respectively, Director of the National Guard and Minister of Defense at the time the crimes were committed, but never had to face a court or their accusers to answer for their role as commanders presiding over a pattern and practice of institutional violence and near absolute impunity that led to the churchwomen’s deaths. Both defendants currently reside in Florida. On November 3, 2000,    the Jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendants.  Plaintiffs filed a motion for a new trial on November 21, 2000.

The Torture Victim Protection Act
The Torture Victim Protection Act is a federal statute that was designed to give victims of the worst crimes—or their surviving kin—the chance to confront not only the crimes’ direct perpetrators, but also those officials who had the authority and responsibility to ensure that such acts did not take place. Vides Casanova and García clearly ignored that responsibility. During their respective tenures, both men knowingly tolerated systematic and widespread abuses responsible for tens of thousands of noncombatant deaths. Because of the official tolerance for these crimes, those responsible were almost never punished.

The Responsibility of High Level Officials
The Report of the Truth Commission in El Salvador, delivered to the UN Secretary General in March 1993 found that:

• the Guardsmen and their Sergeant obeyed orders from superiors to execute the women.
  
  
• high ranking military personnel knew that the murders had been carried out pursuant to superior orders and concealed these facts, harming the judicial investigation.
  
  
• the Defense Minister of the time, José Guillermo García, made "no serious effort to thoroughly investigate those guilty of the assassinations."

The Conviction and Testimony of the Guardsmen
In May 1984, the five enlisted members of the National Guard of El Salvador were convicted of the crime, and sentenced to thirty years in prison. In March 1998, Scott Greathead and Robert O. Weiner of the Lawyers Committee traveled to El Salvador to interview the Guardsmen in prison, except Colindres Aleman, who refused to talk. The other four admitted for the first time that they acted on orders of higher level Salvadoran officials, and they have since faced death threats for their disclosures.

Months after the interviews, three of the Guardsmen were released from prison. Particularly disturbing was the parole of Colindres Alemán, who in addition to leading the detail that committed the murders, has shown no remorse and has consistently refused to assist authorities investigating the case. El Salvador's Attorney General, Manuel Córdova Castellano, has refused repeated requests to secure the guards' formal testimony and the Salvadoran government continues to refuse to prosecute the case.

Special Embassy Evidence
The Lawyers Committee then requested the release of previously undisclosed information in the possession of the State Department, including special embassy evidence, a highly classified piece of evidence that the State Department claimed was definitive proof that Colindres Aleman had acted on his own. Finally, 18 years after it was obtained by the U.S government, it was turned over to the Lawyers Committee.  The Lawyers Committee continues to have requests pending for various U.S. agency materials on the case.