June 24, 2002

On Monday, June 24, the long-awaited civil trial of two Salvadoran generals for torture committed by their subordinates commenced in a West Palm Beach Florida courtroom. The trial is expected to last 3-4 weeks.

By: Patty Blum, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International
Human Rights Law Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall, and member, Legal Advisory Board, CJA; assisted by Daniela Yanai, Boalt Hall Law Student

Trial Update, Day One - “This is case number 99-8364….” so intoned Judge Daniel Hurley as he began the first day of trial of Romagoza et al. v. Garcia and Vides. The jury of three men and seven women were ushered into the courtroom. Judge Hurley emphasized that this case is of enormous importance – for plaintiffs, defendants and the community. James Green, one of two lead counsel for the plaintiffs, delivered the opening statement. This case, he said, is about the failure of the defendants to fulfill their duties as military commanders.

In El Salvador in 1979, the military presided over a reign of terror against unarmed civilians. By the end of the conflict, some 75,000 civilians had been murdered. Juan Romagoza, Neris Gonzalez and Carlos Mauricio were survivors of that policy, victims of the most brutal forms of torture. According to Green, General José Guillermo Garcia as Minister of Defense, and General Eugenio Vides-Casanova as Director of the National Guard and then Minister of Defense, were two of the most powerful men in the military.

The military in El Salvador, Green explained, was like a brotherhood. An officer corps of little more than one hundred, they protected each other, themselves and the military as an institution and reacted violently against any group or person they perceived as a threat. The abuses became so widespread that even high-level U.S. government officials blamed the military.

U.S. law (the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act) allows for civil lawsuits in which commanders can be held legally responsible for torture and other gross human rights abuses committed by their subordinates. Green emphasized that the U.S. must not be a safe haven for torturers. El Salvador passed an amnesty law protecting the generals from prosecution in their own country.

Green told the jury about the lives and experiences of each of the plaintiffs. As he recounted their stories, the courtroom was silent. The painful reality of their experiences permeated every corner of the intimate home these narratives will inhabit for the next several weeks. Green emphasized that the torture of Gonzalez, Romagoza and Mauricio took place in official government locations and that they were not the acts of rogue soldiers but occurred on the generals’ watch, under their command.

Invoking the precedent of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals after World War II, Green stated that military and political leaders can be held responsible for failing to control their troops or punish perpetrators of abuses, and that torture is not allowed under any circumstances. The generals have admitted in prior testimony that El Salvador is bound by the Geneva Conventions, the law of war which prohibits attacks on civilians.

A rigid chain of command existed in El Salvador. Green explained to the jury that all the domestic security forces, functioning like secret police, were under military command. Green stressed that the real power in El Salvador resided with the military, not with any civilian authority. General Garcia maintained power throughout the relevant 1979-1983 time period. Both Garcia and Vides had the power to issue orders and discipline members of security forces. By their actions or inactions, they failed to prevent or punish the perpetrators of atrocities. They chose never to punish a single officer; instead as experts will testify, they promoted known human rights abusers and purged young officers who complained. Garcia and Vides cannot hide behind the claims that the abuses were international propaganda or a “novella,” a fiction, as they have done in the past. The doctrine of command responsibility states that the generals must act to stop abuses if they knew or should have known they were occurring. But as Green pointed out, the reality of the abuses was visible everywhere, from bodies in the streets to reports of kidnappings, to newspaper ads taken out by the families and friends of the disappeared….every week, week in and week out. Archbishop Romero beseeched the military to stop the violence. Even the generals’ own expert, former Ambassador Edwin Corr, stated that “one would have had to been a dunce, blind or deaf not to have known” what was going on.

As Green emphasized, the generals knew. Dozens of U.S. government cables reported on meetings in which the generals were urged to stop the repression. Amnesty International flooded the Salvadoran government with letters protesting the detentions and tortures. The OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights sent an investigator to El Salvador. Defendant Vides-Casanova has already admitted that when he became Director of the National Guard, he made no attempt to close the chambers or otherwise send a message that torture would not be permitted under his watch.

According to Green, the acts of terror carried out by the state, with the generals at the helm, were systematic and deliberate. These acts constituted criminal activity on a massive scale. This case is not about how the generals should have conducted the war against the armed opposition. It is about a military strategy, “plain and simple” to terrorize civilians, innocent unarmed citizens. It is about the culture of impunity created by the defendants in which perpetrators were never punished, never had to answer for any of their crimes. Instead, a code of silence was their watchword, to protect their own at any cost. “There was a civil war,” he said, “not a suspension of civilization. The generals must be held accountable.”

The first witness was Dr. Juan Romagoza. Romagoza, from a rural community in El Salvador, wanted to be a doctor because he witnessed the lack of medical care in his family and community. During his studies, he and other medical students began a free clinic at the University of El Salvador, where they treated survivors of torture and the poor. While a resident, he witnessed the military storm his hospital and kidnap a patient. In another instance, security forces gunned a recovering patient under Romagoza’s care to death. He took the bullet casings from the guns used to kill the young man to Archbishop Romero’s office. The Archbishop mentioned the case in a homily given just days before he was murdered by assassins’ bullets. When the university was closed down by the military, the clinic was the first place they attacked. They leveled the medical school -- not a single book was left intact.

Romagoza was not politically involved or a guerrilla. He simply believed in basic principles of assisting the poor. On December 12, 1980, he and several colleagues had gone to the small town of Santa Anita in Chaletanango to provide health services. They knew that it was the Festival of the Virgin of Guadelupe and that many of the campesinos in the area would be there. Two trucks appeared with members of the Army, National Guard and plain-clothes men. They began machine-gunning the crowd. People started to run, crying and screaming. Romagoza was wounded in the foot and head. He was arrested and transferred to a helicopter, where his captors threatened to throw him off. He was taken to a cell in El Paraiso (ironically, “heaven”) where he was interrogated and tortured. Later he was given an injection. As he underwent this ordeal, Romagoza thought of his companion and their new born baby and feared he would never see them again.

The next day, he was taken to the headquarters of the National Guard in San Salvador. He was blindfolded. His captors kept saying they were taking him to the “best hotel in El Salvador.” For the next twenty-two days, he suffered unspeakable torture in several different torture rooms at the Guard headquarters. At times, he could hear the screams of other victims. As the jury listened, Romagoza eloquently put words to the experience of spending Christmas in this place of horror. He thought of how he had wanted to take
his little girl that day to meet her grandmother and then how he had to endure the most extreme forms of torment as the night wore on and the Guardsmen became increasingly intoxicated.

Romagoza was tortured in such a way as to ensure that he could never practice his chosen specialty of surgery. His arm was broken as well as his fingers; today he lacks normal function and movement in his hand. He was never treated for any of his injuries. His final days in the National Guard facility were spent in a coffin. During this entire ordeal, he was never charged with any crime, never brought before a judge, never allowed to speak with anyone. When he was finally released, he could not walk and weighed only seventy pounds. One of his uncles, a member of the military, came to get him. As he left the facility, he saw another uncle standing with Vides-Casanova outside the Guard facility.

Romagoza had to go into hiding as soon as he was released. He could not receive medical treatment at a hospital. A medical colleague treated him once, but was afraid to do so again. His friend was killed a year later. He had to self-treat for infections, loss of blood and malnutrition, as he had been given almost no food and water for his entire incarceration. He was finally able to flee to Guatemala, and then Mexico where he finally received medical assistance. He came to the United States, applied for and received asylum and has since become a United States citizen. He works now as the Executive Director of the Clinica del Pueblo in Washington, D.C. which serves the Salvadoran and other Latino communities.

At the end of his testimony, Romagoza told the jury how one day was different than all the others in the middle of his detention. His captors told him that “the big boss” was coming to see him. They also referred to him as “my colonel.” By their demeanor, he knew they meant Vides-Casanova was going to come to his cell. He was chained to the floor when Vides-Casanova arrived. From underneath his blindfold, he could see Vides-Casanova’s shiny boots, different from the other Guardsmen, pressed pants of a different fabric and special belt buckle. Vides-Casanova interrogated him about his uncles in the military, pressing him to see if they were aligned with the armed opposition. Vides-Casanova showed no concern for Romagoza’s well-being. Once Vides-Casanova left, Romagoza had to endure many more days of extreme torture. As the whole courtroom watched, Romagoza identified General Vides-Casanova as the man whose voice he heard that day and whom he saw on his release.

The defendants’ lawyer, Kurt Klaus, the same lawyer who represented them in the litigation brought by the families of the four American churchwomen killed in El Salvador in December, 1980, cross-examined Romagoza. After a number of brief questions, Klaus asked Romagoza why he brought this lawsuit. Romagoza ended the day on an eloquent note. He explained that he has long thought about the fact that there had never been any justice for victims from El Salvdaor. Unlike the many who were killed, he was still alive and one of the few who could tell this story. “It is not fair,” he said, “for me to remain silent. Scars cannot be erased with treaties and amnesty…[W]e both – me and the generals -- live in the U.S. now. It would not be right that people who violated human rights and human dignity to be welcomed here. For me, it is time to start erasing wounds.”