A former El Salvadoran colonel was sentenced to 133 years in prison on Friday for the murder of five Spanish Jesuits in 1989 during the Central American country’s civil war.
Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, 77, was found guilty by a Spanish court for the murders of the priests’ housekeeper, her 15-year-old daughter and a local Jesuit priest as well. The killings were one of the incidents in a decade-long civil war during which 75,000 people were killed and 8,000 went missing. Morales was deputy minister for public security. The five people killed were Father Ignacio Ellacuria, university rector, and Fathers Ignacio Martín-Baro, Juan Ramón Moreno, Amando López and Segundo Montes. Salvadoran Jesuit Father Joaquín López and Julia Elba Ramos, a housekeeper, and her teenage daughter Celina were the other victims. Morales saw the Jesuits as traitors and considered them to be associated with rebels from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.
The judges found Morales guilty of five counts of “murder of terrorist nature”, adding that as the killings were committed on orders of the state, making them what “is commonly known as terrorism implemented by the state”. The judges said the maximum prison term is 30 years—Morales has been given 26 years, eight months and one day for each murder.
Conan Castro, legal secretary of the presidency in El Salvador, was quoted by Reuters as saying, “There are other acts that still have to be judged.”
So far, 20 former El Salvadoran army officers have been indicted by the Spanish government for the killings.
