1066

1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

2 NORTHERN DIVISION

4 JUAN ROMAGOZA ARCE, JANE ) Docket No.

DOE, in her personal capacity ) 99-8364-CIV-HURLEY

5 as Personal Representative of )

the ESTATE OF BABY DOE, )

6 )

Plaintiffs, )

7 vs. ) West Palm Beach, Florida

) July 8, 2002

8 JOSE GUILLERMO GARCIA, an )

individual, CARLOS EUGENIO VIDES)

9 CASANOVA, an individual, and ) VOLUME 7

DOES 1 through 50, inclusive, )

10 )

Defendants. )

11 _______________________________ x

14 COURT REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT OF

TESTIMONY AND PROCEEDINGS HAD BEFORE

15 JUDGE DANIEL T. K. HURLEY

17 APPEARANCES:

18 For the Plaintiffs: JAMES GREEN, ESQ.

PETER STERN, ESQ.

19 BETH VanSCHAACK, ESQ.

20 For Defendant: KURT KLAUS, ESQ.

Court Reporter: Pauline A. Stipes, C.S.R., C.M.

24 PAULINE A. STIPES

Official Reporter

25 U. S. District Court

1067

1 THE COURT: All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we

2 all have our computers coordinated and working. That is

3 fine.

4 In the effort to get started, it occurred to me

5 after the fact that I neglected to administer the oath to

6 Mr. Icaza.

7 Now, we have had the benefit of having three

8 court interpreters throughout the process, two of whom are

9 Federally certified court interpreters.

10 As I understand it, there is a national

11 examination given. The problem is, it has not been given

12 in many, many years. We have a real problem in trying to

13 have people be able to be certified under that.

14 We have had the benefit in our trial of

15 Mr. Francis Icaza, who is the director of Advanced

16 Translating Corporation. I need to administer the oath,

17 and what I would do is administer the oath and make it

18 retroactive, that is, everything translated is retroactive

19 and move forward. Is that agreeable?

20 MR. KLAUS: That is agreeable.

21 THE COURT: Normally The Court does not interpret

22 the oath to others not Federally certified. I did not

23 intend to do that because the other folks have received

24 the oath as part of their certification. Again, is that

25 agreeable to both parties?

1068

1 (Interpreter sworn.)

2 THE COURT: Thank you very much.

3 Are we all set now and ready to proceed?

4 Mr. Marshal, would you bring in the jury, please?

5 (Thereupon, the jury returned to the courtroom.)

6 THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, please be

7 seated.

8 Good morning, everybody. I hope you all had a

9 nice weekend. Not too rainy.

10 As you know, when we stopped prior to our last

11 recess, we are still in the Plaintiffs' case in chief, so

12 I am going to turn now, if I might, to Plaintiffs' counsel

13 and allow the Plaintiffs to call their next witness.

14 Mr. Stern?

15 MR. STERN: May it please The Court. Plaintiff's

16 call professor Terry Karl.

17 THE COURT: Professor Karl.

18 By the way, the pointer is on the witness stand

19 if you want to remove that so it won't be in the

20 professor's way.

21 Professor, would you please sit down and make

22 yourself comfortable? I need to tell you the microphone

23 has a short pickup range. I think if you pull that

24 closer, you will be more comfortable and you will be able

25 to sit back.

1069

1 If you would raise your right hand.

2 TERRY KARL, PLAINTIFFS' WITNESS SWORN.

3 THE COURT: Professor, would you be good enough

4 starting out introducing yourself to the members of the

5 jury? And would you tell them your full name and spell

6 your last name for the court reporter?

7 THE WITNESS: Terry Lynn Karl, K-A-R-L,

8 T-E-R-R-Y.

9 THE COURT: Thank you so much.

10 Let me turn to Mr. Stern.

11 DIRECT EXAMINATION

12 BY MR. STERN:

13 Q. Good morning. Where are you from?

14 A. I am from Missouri.

15 Q. Where do you teach?

16 A. I teach at Stanford university.

17 Q. What do you teach?

18 A. Latin America politics, Central America politics,

19 politics of military rights, how militaries rule,

20 transitions to democracy.

21 Q. Tell us about your educational background.

22 A. I got my Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1982. I

23 subsequently became a professor at Harvard University where

24 I worked during the 1980's, and I returned to my alma mater

25 in 1986 where I am currently professor of political

1070

1 science.

2 Q. You mentioned a couple areas of specialization

3 already. Would you walk through them one by one in terms

4 of your areas of expertise?

5 A. Well, I work on several things. I have been for 12

6 years director for the Center of Latin America Studies in

7 Stanford. In that capacity we are expected to know about

8 areas in Latin America, particularly areas in the news or

9 that are important where we may have to publicly represent

10 the university.

11 My own, one of my own areas of specialty has been,

12 really since 1979, Central America, and particularly El

13 Salvador, which is the country I have written the most

14 about in Central America.

15 Q. Does your expertise include politics and political

16 history of El Salvador?

17 A. Yes, it does.

18 Q. Have you had an opportunity to study military

19 institutions in El Salvador in the past generation?

20 A. Yes, I studied them extensively in part because of my

21 own interest about how militaries rule in Latin America,

22 but also because I have been requested to do so by members

23 of the U.S. Congress, and by members of our Defense

24 Department.

25 Q. Would you tell us more about your relation to the

1071

1 members of Congress and Defense Department in regard to El

2 Salvador, please?

3 A. Well, El Salvador, as you remember, was a major

4 foreign policy issue in the early 1980's. It was a center

5 of a whole series of debates in the U.S. Congress. I was

6 asked by the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on

7 Hemisphere of Affairs -- this is a subcommittee in Congress

8 that looks at Latin America the most, and responsible for

9 the region of Latin America. I was asked by the Chairman

10 to advise him on what was happening in El Salvador in

11 particular.

12 There was conflicting information. If I could go to

13 El Salvador and try to find out for myself and begin an

14 analysis what was happening in that country. I started

15 going to El Salvador in the early 1980's and I have

16 continued to go there over the last 20 years.

17 Q. What was the original reason for you going to El

18 Salvador?

19 A. Well, the original reason was several fold. Actually.

20 I was working in Venezuela earlier and I met a number of

21 Salvadorans living in exile, including Jos‚ Napolean Duarte

22 who became president of El Salvador. And their stories

23 began to interest me, and the fact they were returning in

24 1979 made me feel I had some kind of an entre in terms of

25 getting interviews.

1072

1 And I was assistant professor of government at

2 Harvard, and I was getting constant calls from the press,

3 from Congress because of that position, and later on from

4 immigration authorities, from immigration judges, et

5 cetera, because there was really nobody who knew very much

6 about this country in the United States.

7 And I realized because of these calls that I wanted to

8 know more, and so I started to go under the auspices of

9 Harvard, under the auspices of international affairs in

10 Harvard, which sent me on my first trip.

11 And I did my first interviews. I subsequently went

12 back a number of times through the '80's. I actually don't

13 remember how many times I have been to El Salvador. And I

14 also began to investigate a series of events that happened

15 in El Salvador.

16 I think the first serious investigations I did were

17 along the Salvadoran/Honduran border. El Salvador borders

18 with Honduras. And there was a series of peasant massacres

19 that happened around 1980, and my first trips were actually

20 to look at the conflicting reports about those massacres.

21 Q. When you went to El Salvador, did you interview people

22 from Salvadoran society?

23 A. I did.

24 Q. Who in particular, what types of people did you

25 interview?

1073

1 A. I interviewed anybody who I could get to talk to me.

2 I interviewed the leaders of the armed forces, many of the

3 key colonels in the armed forces. I interviewed all

4 presidents in El Salvador from 1982 to the present,

5 actually. I interviewed the parties, heads of the parties

6 of the right. I interviewed heads of the parties to the

7 left. I interviewed church officials, I interviewed

8 officials of the Lutheran Church which were very involved

9 there. I interviewed Jewish aid agencies.

10 I interviewed peasants. I interviewed head of labor

11 unions, I interviewed head of peasant associations, head of

12 human rights groups. I actually interviewed members who

13 were acknowledged participants in death squads. I traveled

14 with all presidential candidates in El Salvador. I am sure

15 I am forgetting somebody. I did extensive interviewing.

16 Q. Did you find people were generally willing to talk to

17 you?

18 A. I was, I believe, the only -- certainly the only

19 American academic there at the time. The only other people

20 who were there were journalists, and journalists were not

21 always welcome in El Salvador. In fact, more journalists

22 were killed in El Salvador than the entire Vietnam war.

23 They had difficulty getting information, particularly the

24 beginning. That eased up later.

25 Q. When you say the beginning?

1074

1 A. Particularly 1980, '81, which was the most repressive

2 period of time in El Salvador. And I found because I was

3 not writing something that would instantly appear in New

4 York Times and Miami Herald, because I was gathering

5 information that didn't come out right away, and because I

6 was gathering information for what I hoped would be

7 articles or a book, I could say I am writing about this,

8 this will come out, it can be confidential if you wish, it

9 can be with your name, if you wish.

10 These are our normal practices as an academic, you can

11 do confidential interviews, you can guarantee

12 confidentiality. But I think because I wasn't putting

13 something outright away that would have an instant impact,

14 people were more willing to talk to me.

15 Q. Did you find interviews such as you described to be an

16 important knowledge for your research and writing?

17 A. For me they are the fundamental piece of my knowledge.

18 I also have read thousands of declassified government

19 cables, I read thousands of pages of books about El

20 Salvador, histories of El Salvador, I read these in several

21 languages, both Salvadoran sources, American sources,

22 sources in other countries that wrote about El Salvador.

23 But for me the things that really taught me how people

24 saw this war, how they understood it, how they understood

25 their own actions, how they understood what was happening

1075

1 around them really came from their own words.

2 Q. After you gathered all of the information you

3 described, how did you go about assembling it and

4 processing it so you can make scholarly conclusions?

5 A. Well, this was a very conflicting time, the

6 information and reliability of the information was crucial.

7 Everyone would tell you something different depending on

8 who you were talking to. So it became very important for

9 me to corroborate evidence. In other words, to look for

10 evidence that supported what somebody was telling me as

11 opposed to what somebody else was telling me.

12 The other thing I did -- forgive me if this is a

13 little academic, but one of the things we have to do in our

14 training, we are forced by our training to test ourselves

15 in our own biases, or our own opinions in a sense.

16 So I actually teach a course on this, about how not to

17 be Christopher Columbus. If you remember, Christopher

18 Columbus goes and he thinks he is going to the east, and

19 finding Indian China, but comes to the Caribbean. He

20 writes as if he is in Indian China, he tells everybody he

21 is in Indian China. He won't see -- the evidence that he

22 is not in Indian China is in his face. We have what we

23 call rival hypothesis.

24 If you believe the military is committing civil human

25 rights abuses, you have to have a hypothesis that the

1076

1 military is not committing human rights abuses. And then

2 you look for evidence from both sides to come up with a

3 conclusion. That is how we are trained.

4 I had to look everywhere, and I had to go in places

5 that were uncomfortable for me, I would say, and sometimes

6 somewhat scary to find out if the information I was being

7 given. And conflicting information I was being given, if I

8 could find corroborating evidence.

9 Q. Does your expertise cover human rights in El Salvador

10 in the periods from 1979 through '83?

11 A. Yes, it does.

12 Q. And what is that expertise based on?

13 A. Well, human rights expertise is based on a number of

14 things. I teach a course on the global politics of human

15 rights, and one of the things I do is try to understand and

16 teach about patterns of violence, why violence has a logic,

17 when it does have a logic, how do you know indiscriminate

18 violence from direct violence, how do you know when a

19 strategy is deliberate, when a strategy -- when there may

20 be random violence in a society.

21 I also was asked by the immigration courts and

22 immigration judges to help them with the issue of El

23 Salvador. I may need to back up and explain this.

24 Q. Please go ahead.

25 A. For our immigration judges, El Salvador was a shock,

1077

1 because generally they dealt with primarily Mexicans, at

2 least from Latin America, Mexicans coming across the border

3 from Mexico looking for work, looking for a place to work,

4 and suddenly they have Salvadorans coming across the

5 border. And not necessarily looking for work, but telling

6 quite horrible stories about what happened. They were

7 tortured, fleeing terror, a massacre in their village, et

8 cetera.

9 And these were scarcely credible to these judges.

10 They say no, you are telling me that because you want to be

11 here to work. And what happened is, they started

12 contacting me and asking me whether the stories they were

13 hearing were credible, because they had to rule on these

14 stories about whether someone would stay or go back to the

15 United States -- excuse me, El Salvador.

16 So I agreed to begin to track the patterns and

17 practices of violence in El Salvador. I had in my office

18 students who helped me. I had a quite huge detailed map of

19 El Salvador and we would track who we could -- where we

20 could see people dying, who was dying, what kinds of

21 victims, who they said was killing them, so we would know

22 where in the country people were dying, where people were

23 being tortured, where you would find bodies on the street,

24 where people were being decapitated, what kinds of patterns

25 we could see, and I had this huge map of different color

1078

1 opinions that would track these?

2 I used that information, I took a number of trips to

3 El Salvador, and I used that information in hundreds of

4 affidavits I did for the immigration courts and

5 subsequently affidavits I did for the -- for the Federal

6 Court system in the United States. And eventually

7 affidavit for the Supreme Court.

8 Q. In your work on human rights abuses, did you make

9 efforts to assess human rights reporting that was coming

10 out of El Salvador?

11 A. Yes, I did. Again, conflicting information, as

12 always, and the problem is to find the information that

13 fits with the most corroborating facts.

14 There were a number of people tracking violence in El

15 Salvador at this time, or a number of organizations, and I

16 wanted to see how they did it, and how -- if what they were

17 finding accorded with information that I had.

18 So what I did was look at the reporting patterns of

19 the U.S. Embassy, which is one source of tracking violence.

20 The U.S. Embassy had a way of tracking violence which they

21 would then send back to the State Department. These were

22 called Grim Grams.

23 What they did, they put a statistic on who was found

24 that day, or that week in El Salvador, who was dead. The

25 Embassy had a way of tracking reporting by reading

1079

1 Salvadoran newspapers and cutting out or recording the

2 deaths that were reported in the newspapers. So their way

3 of tracking statistics was from the Salvadoran newspapers

4 themselves, and then there were other ways from other

5 groups.

6 Q. Did you also pursue reports of human rights abuses

7 when you were in El Salvador on the ground there?

8 A. Yes, I did. The other thing I did is track the way

9 human rights organizations -- at that time there was a

10 group called Americas Watch there, Amnesty was there, there

11 were several Salvadoran human rights organizations, a

12 governmental one, non governmental one. I tried to see how

13 all of them tracked statistics, how did they gather their

14 information. For example, Tutela Legal, legal aid society,

15 they would not track through newspapers, they would go out

16 and find bodies, so they could only count a death by a body

17 they found and recorded.

18 Now, they had an advantage over the U.S. Embassy which

19 is that El Salvador is primarily Catholic country. As a

20 Catholic country there are Catholic priests and dioceses

21 and church workers all over the country. The Catholic

22 church workers or priests took it upon themselves to find

23 bodies, people came to them and said Father, there is a

24 body over there, or Father, there is a body over there, and

25 they began to get cameras, take pictures, record the

1080

1 bodies, write descriptions of where they were found, write

2 descriptions of identifying clothing, a belt buckle, a

3 piece of jewelry, descriptions of the clothes, et cetera,

4 and they would send this back to the Archbishop's office,

5 the central Catholic office.

6 I went out with the legal aid society to see how they

7 did this. I did --

8 Q. Did you see any victims of human rights abuses?

9 A. Oh, yes, oh, yes. In San Salvador we would get up

10 early in the morning and the first place we go is to the

11 city morgue. The reason we go to the morgue is people who

12 were killed, people who killed them would often drop them

13 in front of the morgue.

14 One morning I came to the morgue, there was a pile of

15 bodies there, left there in front of the morgue, so they

16 would take pictures of the bodies. And then as the people

17 in the morgue would separate the bodies, they take close-up

18 photos of the heads and injuries of people. These would --

19 We would also not just go to the morgue, but we would

20 go out and I wandered through the streets, particularly in

21 the poor areas, because bodies were very seldom found until

22 much later in the wealthier areas of El Salvador. This was

23 really a war that it was the poor who died primarily in

24 this war.

25 You will hear of other famous cases, but it was

1081

1 peasants, citizens inside San Salvador, et cetera, who

2 died. And so bodies were found in Mejicanos, Santa Tecla,

3 these poor areas. We would go there and find a body.

4 Someone would say there is a body over there, we would take

5 pictures, I would watch how the pictures were taken and how

6 they were recorded.

7 I then followed through the whole process, because

8 what happened after that, all these pictures were put in

9 photo albums, big, big photo albums. So this person found

10 here. There was very seldom identification on these

11 bodies, so you didn't know who these people were.

12 And they weren't necessarily found where they were

13 killed. They might be found in a body dump, in a morgue,

14 actually miles away from where they were dumped. There

15 were bodies dumped from helicopters, so they would be found

16 somewhere else.

17 And so these were collected in these big books that

18 the Archbishop office kept, and these books were provided

19 in the offices of the Catholic legal aid services for

20 family members to come and look through if they couldn't

21 find somebody in their family.

22 So, I then would go where the books were kept, and I

23 would watch family members come in and go through these

24 pictures looking for their son or their mother, father or

25 their aunt or friend, or whomever. I would see them

1082

1 occasionally identify somebody and say, here this person

2 is. And then they go through the corroborating evidence,

3 because people might be tortured, so their faces would be

4 battered, identifications were not so easy. So you would

5 see -- for example, I once saw a person not being sure

6 someone was -- it was a mother, not being sure this was her

7 son because the face was battered. And they had a clear

8 description of the belt buckle that the boy who had been

9 killed was wearing, and so she could identify her son

10 because she had given him the belt.

11 Q. In the early 1980's did you discuss the subject of

12 human rights abuses in El Salvador with members of the

13 Salvadoran military and government?

14 A. Yes, I did.

15 Q. And who did you have those discussions with?

16 A. I had those discussions with a number of colonels I

17 met in a variety of ways. Unless it is necessary, I prefer

18 not to give those names because my discussions have been on

19 the basis of confidentiality, and we don't break that

20 unless we are absolutely required to.

21 Q. Apart from the Congressional organizations that you

22 mentioned, have you been in a position of advising any

23 other governmental or international organizations on the

24 subject of Salvadoran military or human rights?

25 A. During the early -- actually, through most of the war

1083

1 I advised members of Congress. I took a number of members

2 of Congress on fact finding tips to El Salvador where they

3 would go themselves. I took the Chairman of the House

4 Committee on Hemispheric Affairs, I took the Chairman of

5 the Appropriations Committee.

6 This was important because the Appropriations

7 Committee decides on aid to El Salvador, on military and

8 economic aid to El Salvador. I took a delegation from the

9 State of Massachusetts because I was teaching in Boston at

10 the time, and I took a delegation that included Senators,

11 Congressmen and the Attorney General of Massachusetts.

12 I did a number of those kind of -- they call them

13 junkets. I did advising also in 1989. There was movement

14 towards a peace agreement in El Salvador which subsequently

15 occurred, was signed in 1992. That peace agreement was

16 brokered, it was mediated by the Secretary General's office

17 of the United Nations, and the Secretary General appointed

18 his assistant Secretary General to show how important it

19 was. He gave his number two man to the Salvadoran peace

20 agreement, and I became a consultant with him.

21 Q. Without getting into details, have you published in

22 the area of the Salvadoran military rights in the 1980's?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. Do you lecture in that area as well?

25 A. Yes, I do.

1084

1 Q. Before we go into your opinions in detail, Professor

2 Karl, I want to ask you a couple questions.

3 On the basis of your experience and materials that you

4 have reviewed and told the jury about, have you formed an

5 opinion as to whether in 1979 through 1983 in El Salvador

6 there was a pattern and practice of human rights violations

7 carried out by the Salvadoran military and security forces?

8 A. Yes, I have an opinion about this.

9 Q. And what is your opinion?

10 A. There was a pattern and practice of gross and

11 systematic violations of human rights in El Salvador.

12 These violations of human rights were among the highest in

13 the world, and they are the second highest ever recorded in

14 the history of Latin America.

15 Q. In 1979 through '83, the period you referred to, do

16 you know who the Minister of Defense of El Salvador was?

17 A. Yes, I do.

18 Q. Who is that?

19 A. General Garcia.

20 Q. That is the General Garcia in our courtroom today?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And during that period who was the director of the

23 National Guard?

24 A. General Vides Casanova.

25 Q. Sitting in the courtroom today?

1085

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. After 1983, do you know who became the Minister of

3 Defense?

4 A. Yes, General Casanova.

5 Q. Have you formed an opinion as to whether in the 1979

6 through 1983 time period Minister of Defense Garcia and

7 director of the National Guard Vides Casanova knew or

8 should have known of the practice of human rights abuses

9 carried out by the military forces?

10 A. Yes.

11 MR. KLAUS: Objection; beyond the scope of her

12 expertise.

13 THE COURT: One of the issues in this case,

14 ladies and gentlemen, of course, is whether the Defendants

15 knew or should have known that subordinates to them were

16 engaging in human rights violations. I've indicated

17 before that when someone is an expert, they are allowed to

18 come into court and to give an opinion. Of course, it

19 will be for the jury to decide whether to accept that

20 opinion.

21 I am going to overrule the objection and allow

22 the witness to testify to the opinion testimony.

23 MR. KLAUS: The second objection, based on

24 insufficient facts and data to render an opinion as to her

25 knowledge.

1086

1 THE COURT: Well, let's back up for a second.

2 The question really asks two aspects, whether someone

3 actually knew or whether they should have known. All

4 right. And I am going to allow counsel both on direct and

5 on cross, obviously, to deal with these issues, and it

6 would be for the jury to decide whether the fact has been

7 established.

8 So I will overrule the objection and allow

9 counsel to proceed.

10 BY MR. STERN:

11 Q. Do you have the question in mind?

12 A. Would you repeat it, please?

13 Q. Sure. Based on the research you have done and your

14 own experience in El Salvador, do you have an opinion as to

15 whether in 1979 through 1983 Minister of Defense Garcia and

16 Director General of the National Guard Vides Casanova knew

17 or should have known about the practice of human rights

18 abuses carried out by military and security forces in that

19 period?

20 THE COURT: If I might, Mr. Stern, would it be

21 helpful if you broke it up? I think it would be of

22 assistance to both sides. You are talking about knew or

23 should have known. Would you break that up?

24 MR. STERN: Certainly, Your Honor.

1087

1 BY MR. STERN:

2 Q. Do you have an opinion as to whether General Garcia

3 and General Vides Casanova knew about human rights abuses

4 in that period?

5 MR. KLAUS: Same objection.

6 THE COURT: Let's break it up as to specific

7 Defendants.

8 MR. STERN: Certainly Your Honor.

9 BY MR. STERN:

10 Q. Do you have an opinion whether '79 through '83

11 Minister of Defense Garcia knew about the practice of human

12 rights abuses carried out by military and security forces?

13 MR. KLAUS: Same objection.

14 THE COURT: I will overrule the objection. You

15 may answer the question.

16 THE WITNESS: I have reviewed thousands of U.S.

17 cables and thousands of documents about El Salvador,

18 including internal documents to the military of El

19 Salvador, and it is my opinion that General Garcia, then

20 Colonel Garcia, did know about human rights abuses.

21 BY MR. STERN:

22 Q. In terms of Minister of Defense -- strike that.

23 Would that also imply that you have an opinion about

24 whether General Garcia should have known about those abuses

25 given the information available to him?

1088

1 MR. KLAUS: Same objection.

2 THE COURT: Same ruling. You may proceed.

3 THE WITNESS: Yes, I have an opinion. I believe

4 that General Garcia also should have known about these

5 human rights abuses.

6 BY MR. STERN:

7 Q. With respect to Director General of the National Guard

8 Vides Casanova, do you have an opinion as to whether

9 General Vides Casanova knew about practice of human rights

10 abuses carried out by the military and security forces in

11 1979 through 1983, and thereafter?

12 MR. KLAUS: Same objection.

13 THE COURT: Same ruling. You may proceed.

14 THE WITNESS: Yes, I have an opinion.

15 BY MR. STERN:

16 Q. And what is your opinion, Professor Karl?

17 A. My opinion is that he both knew and should have known

18 about these abuses in El Salvador.

19 Q. And briefly, why is that?

20 A. I think you will see from my testimony that the

21 evidence is overwhelming that there was massive repression

22 going on in El Salvador, including in the City of San

23 Salvador. And when you find bodies in places that would be

24 the equivalent of the Sheraton here, City Place, F.A.U., on

25 the streets, et cetera, in the newspapers, on television,

1089

1 it would be inconceivable not to know, in my view.

2 And when you find that people from every single U.S.

3 Ambassador to two secretaries of state, to a personal visit

4 from Vice President Bush tells them that this is happening,

5 it would also be inconceivable.

6 Q. Based on your research and personal experience,

7 Professor Karl, do you have an opinion as to whether

8 Minister of Defense General Garcia had the power to prevent

9 or curb human rights abuses in the 1979 to '83 time period?

10 MR. KLAUS: Objection. Beyond the expertise, and

11 lack of sufficient data.

12 THE COURT: Overruled. You may proceed.

13 BY MR. STERN:

14 Q. Do you have an opinion on that subject, Professor

15 Karl?

16 A. Yes. What a political science does is study power,

17 that is what we do. My purpose in El Salvador was also to

18 find out who had the power, and how that power was

19 exercised. I think that General Garcia was probably the

20 most powerful person in El Salvador when he was Minister of

21 Defense.

22 Q. And what about Director General of the National Guard

23 Vides Casanova, do you have an opinion as to whether he had

24 the power to prevent human rights abuses in that period?

25 A. I do have an opinion.

1090

1 MR. KLAUS: Objection; same basis.

2 THE COURT: Same ruling. You may proceed.

3 BY MR. STERN:

4 Q. What is your opinion, Professor Karl?

5 A. I think he had the power to prevent and stop the kinds

6 of abuses that were going on in El Salvador.

7 Q. Do you have an opinion as to whether as Minister of

8 Defense General Garcia took all necessary and reasonable

9 measures to prevent human rights abuses in that period?

10 A. I do.

11 Q. What is your opinion?

12 MR. KLAUS: Again, objection; lack of foundation.

13 THE COURT: I am sorry?

14 MR. KLAUS: Same basis.

15 THE COURT: I will overrule the objection. You

16 may proceed.

17 THE WITNESS: My opinion is that he did not take

18 the most minimal reasonable actions to prevent human

19 rights abuses from occurring or to punish the officers who

20 were presiding over and ordering these abuses.

21 BY MR. STERN:

22 Q. And how about Director General of the National Guard,

23 Vides Casanova, do you have an opinion as to whether he

24 took all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent human

25 rights abuses in the 1979, 1983 time period, and when he

1091

1 became Minister of Defense in 1983, thereafter?

2 MR. KLAUS: Objection; same basis.

3 THE COURT: Same ruling. You may proceed.

4 BY MR. STERN:

5 Q. What is your opinion?

6 A. He did not take all reasonable measures. He did not

7 take common sense measures to prevent human rights abuses

8 or punish abusers.

9 Q. In your opinion did Garcia take all measures to punish

10 abusers within the military and security forces?

11 MR. KLAUS: Objection. Lack of foundation, lack

12 of sufficient data, and beyond the scope of her expertise.

13 THE COURT: Lack of foundation is not an adequate

14 legal objection. What is missing that you think needs to

15 be there?

16 MR. KLAUS: Basis of her opinion, data and facts

17 relied upon to base an opinion.

18 THE COURT: All right. Because the witness has

19 been qualified as an expert in this field, I will overrule

20 the objection, and you can treat this matter in your cross

21 examination.

22 You may proceed.

23 BY MR. STERN:

24 Q. Do you have the question in mind?

25 A. Yes. I believe it was did General Vides Casanova --

1092

1 Q. I believe the question was directed to Minister of

2 Defense Garcia.

3 A. I am sorry.

4 Q. Is it your opinion he took all reasonable measures to

5 punish offenders in the military and security forces in '79

6 through '83?

7 MR. KLAUS: Same objection.

8 THE COURT: Same ruling.

9 THE WITNESS: Not any officer was punished for

10 human rights abuses while Garcia was Minister of Defense.

11 BY MR. STERN:

12 Q. What is your opinion as to whether General Casanova

13 took measures to punish offenders in the military and

14 security forces in 1979 and '83 thereafter?

15 MR. KLAUS: Same objection.

16 THE COURT: Same ruling.

17 THE WITNESS: Not one single officer was ever

18 punished for human rights abuses when Minister of Defense

19 General Vides Casanova occupied that position.

20 BY MR. STERN:

21 Q. Professor Karl, I asked you questions about preventing

22 human rights abuses and punishing offenders. In your

23 opinion is there a relationship between preventing and

24 punishing human rights abusers?

25 A. Yes.

1093

1 Q. What is that relationship?

2 A. If you do not prevent and punish abuses, you

3 implicitly give a green light for those abuses to continue

4 and many more people die and are tortured.

5 Q. Professor Karl, the jury has heard a great deal about

6 human rights abuses in El Salvador in the 1979 and '83 time

7 period. I want to turn to you for background.

8 Why are these events taking place?

9 A. I will try not to teach you my whole course on Central

10 America, but I think to make it as concise as possible,

11 there is really two issues in El Salvador when this all

12 occurs. One is the issue of poverty and equality. This is

13 one of the poorest countries in Latin America. This is a

14 country in which ten percent of the people own 78 percent

15 of the assets of the land.

16 This is an extraordinary statistic. I know we have

17 inequalities in the United States. This is a very

18 different order of magnitude. This is a country where

19 three-fourths of all children are malnourished. This is a

20 country where the leading cause of death when I went there

21 was diarrhea. This is a country where the caloric intake

22 of people, how much they had to eat was the second lowest

23 in Latin America. Even Haitians ate better than

24 Salvadorans at that time.

25 And those kinds of statistics, what they show is a

1094

1 system, economic system that is simply not workable, that

2 cannot provide the kind of education, health care and

3 resources and food and bread and shelter and dignity that

4 people need to have the most minimal life.

5 So, the kind of explosiveness that that was building

6 in that for a variety of reasons is, I think, one piece of

7 the story, enormous poverty and equality.

8 Q. Are there other pieces of the story you point to?

9 A. Yes. The second piece is, there are other countries

10 that are terribly poor and terribly unequal, but they don't

11 explode into civil war.

12 India, for example, has been a country for many, many

13 years has terrible inequalities, terrible poverty, but

14 until lately has been a relatively peaceful country.

15 I think the other factor is, when you have a military

16 dictatorship, when you have military in control, and no

17 ability to form political parties to represent you, no

18 ability to form trade unions to help you better your

19 situation, no ability to form peasant associations that can

20 ask for a different standard of living, no ability to what

21 we call here freedom of association, to associate with

22 people who can help you develop channels to defend your own

23 interest, to try to change things in a peaceful way, if you

24 combine huge in qualities and poverty with repressive

25 military dictatorships, what you do is choke off peaceful

1095

1 ways to resolve conflict.

2 Q. What do you mean when you use the phrase military

3 dictatorship?

4 A. What I mean simply is the military is the predominant

5 organization in the country, predominant power. More

6 important than political parties, more important than

7 Congress, more important than the President, more important

8 than any other organization you can think of, because it

9 has the power and can control and shape those other

10 organizations.

11 That to the extent a Congress exists or elections

12 occur or there is a civilian in the government, those

13 people are there, the phrase we use is at the pleasure of

14 the military. They are put in and taken out.

15 Q. As you look at El Salvador in the 20th century, what

16 was the primary function of the military?

17 A. I think this is very important because the primary

18 function of the Salvadoran military is very different from

19 our own.

20 Most militaries have as a primary function, at least

21 in the beginning, protection and control of their borders

22 against outsiders, so they learn to fight external wars.

23 In the case of El Salvador, this is a different

24 military. From the very beginning, particularly with the

25 National Guard, the purpose of these security forces,

1096

1 particularly the security forces, and by that I mean

2 National Guard, Treasury Police and National Police, the

3 three security forces, they were not aimed at any external

4 control, they were aimed at controlling the poor in El

5 Salvador, making sure peasants worked for landlords like

6 they were supposed to. Making sure workers went to work

7 and didn't demand minimal wages, did not have a formal way

8 to organize.

9 These were from the earliest foundations, were

10 security forces that were aimed at controlling their own

11 people and keeping the economic system that I so briefly

12 described in place.

13 Q. Professor Karl, to help assist with your testimony

14 today, have you put together some slides to show the jury?

15 A. I have.

16 Q. Before you came to court today, did you look at those

17 to make sure they accurately reflect your opinions?

18 A. Yes, I have.

19 Q. Have you prepared one of the slides on military

20 government in the course of the 20th century in El

21 Salvador?

22 A. Yes, I have.

23 MR. STERN: Could we have slide 105 on the

24 screen, please?

25 MR. KLAUS: Excuse me. Before you show it, from

1097

1 what exhibit is it?

2 MR. STERN: It is not based on a particular

3 exhibit.

4 MR. KLAUS: How can I find it?

5 MR. STERN: I will be happy to point it out to

6 you.

7 Any objection?

8 MR. KLAUS: No objection.

9 MR. STERN: Let's have slide 105, please.

10 BY MR. STERN:

11 Q. Professor Karl, can you describe for us what this

12 slide shows?

13 A. I won't go through all the names in governments for

14 you. What you see here is that the Salvadoran military

15 rules directly since 1932, and you see a whole list of

16 military governments, military presidents that ruled from

17 1932 all the way through the periods of time of interest in

18 this particular case.

19 There is just something I would like -- two things I

20 would like to point out about this.

21 The first is that there is a practice at different

22 times in Salvadoran history of the military to invite

23 civilians into the government, and that is what we call

24 military civilian Juntas, or civilian military Juntas.

25 There is one in '48, one in 1960, '62, and another one that

1098

1 happens in 1970. The only other thing I would like to

2 point out about this is that this is actually, for someone

3 like me who studies Latin America, this is an extraordinary

4 slide, because even though it may seem Latin America is

5 always under military rule to some people, it is actually

6 not true.

7 This is the longest and most extensive military rule,

8 I believe, in the history of Latin America. There may be

9 one other case that is this continuous, but El Salvador has

10 military rule through most of the 20th century

11 uninterrupted, and this is highly unusual.

12 Q. Is there a reason why the list of dates begins in

13 1932?

14 A. Yes, there is. 1932 is a very key date in El

15 Salvador. It is a date of what all Salvadorans refer to as

16 La Matanza, the massacre.

17 Q. Could you spell that?

18 A. M-A-T-A-N-Z-A. Matanza, massacre.

19 And this is the largest uprising of peasants with the

20 participation of the then Communist party to date until the

21 periods of time we are entering in in this trial. So 1932

22 is the largest uprising against the kind of economic system

23 that I described.

24 That uprising is put down by the Salvadoran military

25 in a very, very massive massacre, which is why it is called

1099

1 La Matanza. The uprising was probably several hundred

2 peasants, but at the end somewhere between 10,000 and

3 30,000 peasants were murdered in 1932. We don't know the

4 statistics on this. The records in the library accessible

5 to scholars have disappeared. Most -- between 10,000 and

6 30,000 were dead.

7 Q. What was the consequence of this massacre?

8 A. I think this is very informant for all actors, for the

9 right and for the left. For the military it taught them

10 that terror works, that you actually can have a massive

11 response when you do have some kind of uprising or protest.

12 You can have a massive response, and with that massive

13 response people will subsequently be quiet.

14 If you kill enough people, they will not rise up

15 again, they will not try to organize themselves, and in

16 fact El Salvador is relatively quiet. From the Matanza of

17 1932, until 19 -- the very late 1970's.

18 Q. During this period of military rule, what was the

19 relationship between the military and El Salvador's major

20 landowners?

21 A. Well, I think you have probably heard testimony

22 earlier about the famous 14 families, they were called

23 Laruatanza, the big families that controlled the land I was

24 talking about. The land is the source of the wealth in El

25 Salvador. Where the coffee is grown, cattle grazed, cotton

1100

1 is from, a little bit of sugar, and until recently it was

2 the center of wealth in El Salvador.

3 That land, as I said before, was owned by a few

4 families, virtually the huge majority of land in El

5 Salvador, almost 80 percent. So there were these

6 landowners that were extremely economically powerful.

7 After 1932, after the massacre, Matanza, landowners

8 learned they couldn't rule without the military, and so

9 what you see from 320 is a partnership, the way I think

10 about it, kind of a bargain between the large landowners

11 and the military.

12 When I say military, I am not talking about all the

13 military, foot soldiers, average National Guardsmen, et

14 cetera. What I am talking about is the officer core, which

15 is very small.

16 My way of understanding power in El Salvador in this

17 period of time, a small officer core, and a small group of

18 individuals that literally cooperate with each other,

19 bargain with each other, and have a kind of circulation

20 between them. There are officers who marry into wealthy

21 families, wealthy families who pay off officers to carry

22 out tasks for them, such as helping maintain order on their

23 particular plantation, for example.

24 So there is a kind of bargain or pact that goes on

25 between the officer core and these very wealthy

1101

1 individuals.

2 Q. Did that relationship between the landowners and

3 military officers change over time?

4 A. It does change. I think in the very early period

5 before 1932, it is probably correct to talk about the

6 landowners as the dominant group.

7 From 1932 on you see a difference where the military

8 officers become more and more important and more powerful

9 so you get a kind of equalizing, but as soon as you get

10 into a conflict situation, the military becomes more

11 powerful because it is the military that has to deal with

12 the conflict. That is from the period of time late '70's

13 on.

14 Q. Professor, do you know whether General Casanova

15 married into the wealthy landowners that you described?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. Did he in fact?

18 A. Yes, he did.

19 MR. KLAUS: Objection; sufficient data, time

20 period.

21 THE COURT: I will overrule the objection. You

22 may proceed.

23 BY MR. STERN:

24 Q. What sort of opposition was there to this military

25 rule that you described?

1102

1 A. Well, there wasn't much for a long time.

2 The thing about massacres, they have a great chilling

3 effect on opposition and on any political easternization.

4 What you say is things are quiet until the end of the

5 1960's. The end of the 1960's, a party you heard about,

6 Christian Democratic party, is formed and headed by Jos‚

7 Napoleon Duarte, the man I met in exile in Venezuela. You

8 see parties that are not military parties.

9 Back up a minute. It is important to understand El

10 Salvador during this whole period had elections, and had

11 political parties, but they were military run elections and

12 military parties.

13 The first opposition comes with the formation of the

14 Christian Democratic party, and subsequently -- that is the

15 most important party. And subsequently formation of small

16 guerilla groups that do not believe the military will go

17 peacefully and believe that they need to use armed conflict

18 against the military to get it out of power.

19 Those groups start forming around 1970, the first one

20 is 1970, and the others are after 1972.

21 Q. I want to ask you a question about that in a second.

22 Were there Communist parties on the scene during this

23 period in the 20th century?

24 A. There was a Communist party involved in the 1932

25 Matanza that organized peasants. It was pretty much

1103

1 destroyed in that massacre. And there was a small

2 Communist party that existed in, like other countries in

3 Latin America. The Communist party, however, was quite

4 conservative in the sense that it was not in favor of armed

5 conflict, it was actually the last party to move into armed

6 conflict, partly because it is -- a prior experience had

7 not been one that would make it want to do that again.

8 Q. Now, you mentioned the date of 1972, I think.

9 Did something of significance happen in that year?

10 A. Yes, in 1972 the military held elections, and I

11 believe you heard about this as well, military held

12 elections. Those elections had the party of Jos‚ Napoleon

13 Duarte, Christian Democratic party in collusion with a man

14 Ungo, U-N-G-O, and Guillermo, G-U-I-L-L-E-R-M-O. This was

15 a collusion of Christian democrats and social democrats

16 that had run in the 1972 elections.

17 By all accounts Duarte and his running mate had run in

18 those elections. Duarte was beaten up, and went to

19 Venezuela, which is where I met him. This is a very

20 important moment in this story, very sad one for me since I

21 saw what happened afterwards, because it makes a great part

22 of the opposition believe that peaceful change is not

23 possible, that you must in fact move into armed opposition

24 against the military because they are not going to permit

25 elections.

1104

1 So what you see after that is the beginning of other

2 small armed groups. These are groups of young people who

3 form cells and whose goal is to get rid of the

4 dictatorship.

5 Q. In the '70's, in this period after 1972 that you

6 described, what would you say is the breakdown among the

7 opposition between groups that favored armed change as

8 opposed to more peaceful reform?

9 A. Well, it depends on what moment you look at. In the

10 period of time I'm talking about, there is also another

11 election in '77. That election is also fraudulent, and

12 every time there is a fraudulent election, there are more

13 people that become convinced this way isn't going to work,

14 having elections like this isn't going to work.

15 So I would say that there, really, until about the end

16 of 1980 or 1981, you really have a quite small armed

17 opposition. There is a very, very large peaceful, unarmed

18 opposition, partly made up of Christian democrats and their

19 supporters, partly made up, and very importantly made up of

20 people who follow the teaching of the Catholic Church.

21 And again, this is primarily a Catholic country, so

22 the church's teachings are quite important in this. You

23 begin seeing in the 1970's the formation of what are called

24 Christian based organizations, peasant associations, labor

25 unions, Christian Democratic party.

1105

1 What is happening here is that the church in

2 particular has begun to change its doctrine and instead of

3 saying it is your lot to be poor, but life will be better

4 in the next life, church people are saying, you have the

5 right to bread, you have the right to dignity, you have a

6 right to a roof over your head and you have a right to a

7 decent wage, and you should not be passive. You need to

8 organize yourself to take these rights.

9 And so you see all through the '70's these communities

10 being formed which are Christian based that begin to form

11 an opposition to the military. Now, this is a peaceful

12 opposition, not an armed opposition, and based on forming

13 what they call popular organizations or peasant

14 associations or labor unions, et cetera.

15 Q. What was the attitude of the military toward

16 opposition groups?

17 A. As these began to grow, the military grew very hostile

18 with them. When I speak of the military, just to clarify,

19 I am always speaking of the officer core, I am not speaking

20 of the normal foot soldiers unless I make that clear.

21 The military saw this as a tremendous challenge to

22 them and to their rule, because what you see in the '70's

23 is this increasing growing movement of people. You see

24 organizations all over saying we can change this, we can

25 change this.

1106

1 Even though there are two fraudulent elections in '72

2 and '77, these organizations continue. What happens is

3 that around 1977, if you see that General Romero, there is

4 a debate going on in the military. If you have all of

5 these people against you, all these people saying we have

6 to change, we need a democracy, we want land reform, we

7 want to change economic system, we want decent wages, all

8 these demands rising, the military has, officer core, an

9 internal debate about what to do about this, how to

10 confront this.

11 In the Romero Government, what I call the hard line

12 faction, which is the faction that believes that the La

13 Matanza worked once, the massacre worked once in 1932,

14 let's do it again. That faction becomes predominant and

15 that begins the state of repression in El Salvador, and

16 given what happens later still at relatively low levels.

17 Q. If I could ask to have the lights up, as I understand,

18 you have a time line that you brought with you to help you

19 explain these events?

20 A. I do.

21 Q. I would like to have that put up on the easel, please.

22 A. This is -- in trying to make sense of this war and

23 everything that has happened --

24 THE COURT: Could I make a suggestion? We have

25 these energy efficient lights which means when we turn

1107

1 them off, it takes five or ten minutes to turn on. Just

2 so the jury is able to see the chart, it is a little

3 early, but why don't we stop for the mid-morning recess.

4 When we come back we will have light in the courtroom, and

5 when we come back we will continue on with the professor's

6 testimony.

7 Let's take a break for 15 minutes and when we

8 come back, we will continue on with this testimony.

9 (Thereupon, the jury retired from the courtroom.)

10 THE COURT: Court will be in recess for 15

11 minutes.

12 (Thereupon, a short recess was taken.)

13 THE COURT: Mr. Marshal, would you bring in the

14 jury, please?

15 (Thereupon, the jury returned to the courtroom.)

16 THE COURT: Now we are all set and when we

17 stopped, we were in direct examination. The professor was

18 about to turn to the chart that had been placed up. I

19 think the lights are up now so we can all see.

20 Let me turn to Mr. Stern and Professor Karl.

21 MR. STERN: Thank you.

22 BY MR. STERN:

23 Q. Professor Karl, beginning at the bottom of the time

24 line you prepared, could you explain the events you put

25 together?

1108

1 A. The periods of time that I have been talking about is

2 prior to 1979 where this time line begins.

3 In the green area that you see there, I have located

4 when Defendant Garcia is appointed Minister of Defense,

5 that is right -- excuse me a minute.

6 That is right here (indicating). This is when Vides

7 Casanova is appointed Director General of the National

8 Guard. This is the period of time they actually take the

9 positions they hold.

10 On the bottom what you see is the different times that

11 Mr. Neris Gonzalez is detained and tortured in the national

12 garrison of San Vincenti.

13 You see here in the second entry where Mr. Juan

14 Romagoza is abducted and tortured by members of the

15 National Guard and detained in the National Guard

16 headquarters in San Salvador.

17 And the third entry on the orange section, 6/1/83,

18 1983, when Mr. Carlos Mauricio is detained and tortured

19 within the National Police headquarters in San Salvador.

20 That tells you where the people involved in that

21 particular case are located in on the time line.

22 Up above I have tried to indicate important moments in

23 this early time frame and we -- the period of time I have

24 been talking about, about the origins of the war, and/or

25 beginning of the opposition movement to military

1109

1 dictatorship is in this period here, so we are just

2 starting to get on the boards into 1979.

3 Q. Professor Karl, what is the item that is in the box up

4 at the top left-hand corner of the time line?

5 A. It says -- this is on October 15, 1979, and it says a

6 reformist coup occurs conducted by young officers. This is

7 what you heard referred to as the first Junta, or the

8 October Junta or the October revolution, or the revolution.

9 It is called many different things, and I call it the

10 October 1979 coup.

11 Q. What was the nature of this coup?

12 A. This was a very important moment, because if you

13 remember, before the break I was saying there were

14 different factions in the military arguing about what to do

15 about this rising opposition and how should they handle it.

16 And remember, the military is not just a military, the

17 officer core is not just the officer core, it is the

18 government. So all of the pressures of making decisions

19 about how to deal with this huge unarmed opposition and

20 this much smaller armed opposition is debated in the

21 officer core.

22 And there are essentially two factions. There is the

23 faction of Romero that I showed you earlier had taken

24 charge of the government and that was a faction that