FRESNO, California (CNS): Salvadorans expressed hope that a US federal judge’s ruling against a retired Salvadoran military officer in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero will promote reconciliation and justice in their homeland.
“The truth has finally come out,” said Eduardo Gonzalez, who is executive director of the Oscar Romero Clinic in Los Angeles.
Mr Gonzalez was among the 50 Salvadorans sitting in the courtroom on September 3 as Judge Oliver W. Wanger of the US District Court in Fresno, California ruled that Alvaro Saravia, a retired Salvadoran air force captain, hired and paid the archbishop’s murderer.
The archbishop, a strong critic of human rights abuses by the Salvadoran military, was murdered in 1980 as a civil war was raging.
In El Salvador, Maria Julia Hernandez, who is head of the San Salvador archdiocesan human rights office, asked on September 7 that the archbishop’s case be re-opened in El Salvador in light of the ruling.
