U.S arrests former Salvadoran military officer linked to 1981 massacre

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week confirmed the arrest of retired Salvadoran military officer Roberto Antonio Garay Saravia, who is accused of “assisting or participating in extrajudicial killings and for willfully misrepresenting this material fact in his immigration application.”

Mr. Garay Saravia who has been a legal U.S resident since 2014, allegedly omitted his participation in the so-called El Mozote Massacre, in which nearly 1,000 civilians — mostly unarmed peasants and children — were slaughtered by U.S-trained far-right Salvadoran armed units in 1981. The ex-official is also linked to three other extrajudicial killings that occurred during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. 

The statement says that the former colonel had a role prior to a specialized counterinsurgency unit known as the Atlacatl Battalion, which “has been directly implicated in numerous atrocities,” said Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security John K. Tien, who added that people who “committed atrocities overseas” will be held accountable on U.S. territory. 

El Salvador’s bloody civil war took place between 1979 and 1992, following decades of political and social instability. Heavily influenced by the Cold War, the conflict was sparked by a coup that paved the way for a military junta to take control of the country. 

Fearing a communist advance in El Salvador — the same excuse used to meddle throughout Latin America — Washington stepped up its military and financial support for the conservative military in San Salvador after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. The strategy led to an unprecedented extermination: at least 75,000 people were killed or disappeared. 

The conflict formally ended in January 1992, with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico. But the residual violence did not actually end, spilling over to make El Salvador one the most violent nations in the world in the new century. 

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