Central America, El Salvador, Latin America: Week in Review
Former El Salvador General Charged with Torture Loses Deportation Appeal
March 12, 2015 By Staff
Top Story — The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals struck down Wednesday the request of a former high-ranking El Salvadoran official that he not be extradited back to his home country to stand trial for tortures and killings committed during El Salvador’s brutal civil war.
The appeals panel on Wednesday ruled that Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, 77, formerly the director of the Salvadoran National Guard, colluded with the torture and murder of thousands of civilians between the years of 1979 to 1989 — including the kidnapping, rape and execution of three U.S. nuns and a church laywoman in 1980. Five members of the Salvadoran National Guard were eventually convicted for the crimes against the four churchwomen, but no charges have been brought against higher-ranking officials until now.
The appeals panel agreed with an immigration judge’s earlier order that, because Vides Casanova knew about the crimes as they happened, did nothing to stop them and interfered with the investigations into them, he was accountable.
The former director reportedly entered the United States using an immigrant visa in 1989. Vides Casanova was one of two top El Salvadoran generals to be allowed to settle in the United States under President George Bush, who considered the men to be U.S. allies against communism. Vides Casanova settled in Florida and has lived there for almost 25 years. In 2004, he was given a deportation order under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which bans people who have committed human rights abuses from living in the United States.
Since he was ordered deported, Vides Casanova has argued that he was acting in accordance to U.S. policies at the time of the crimes — the United States having backed the government forces during El Salvador’s civil war — and thus should not be deported.
Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch
- On Tuesday, Colombian President President Juan Manuel Santos announced that the country’s armed forces will stop, for the next month, their bombing operations against FARC rebles. What does this major announcement mean for ongoing peace talks in Havana? Leonardo Goi, a researcher at the Bogotá-based Fundación Ideas Para la Paz, answers that question for Latin America News Dispatch in our latest piece.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- A mayoral candidate was found decapitated on Wednesday in Mexico’s Guerrero state — the same state where 43 students were kidnapped and likely massacred last year — with a note next to the body that threatened similar violence for politicians who don’t “fall in line,” in what appears to be the work of the drug gang “Los Rojos.”
- A new national poll released Wednesday shows that a majority of Americans across party lines support President Barack Obama’s recent change in diplomatic policy toward Cuba, and want to see an end to the 50-year-old embargo on the island.
- Mexico has begun auctioning $52 million per day in an effort to support its quickly devaluing peso, a strategy the country has used twice already this year.
Caribbean
- A telecommunications company building phone towers in Puerto Rico has been accused of destroying the habitat of the guabairo, an endangered bird endemic to the island’s southern region.
Central America
- The Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero will be beatified on May 23 for the human rights work that led to his assassination in 1980, the Roman Catholic Church announced.
Andes
- After a U.S. diplomat said recent sanctions against Venezuela were intended to change rather than topple its government, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez accused her of being “rude” and “petulant.”
- Diplomatic tensions between the United States and Venezuela have spilled into the sphere of culture, as a prominent American jazz musician has cancelled a performance planned to take place in Caracas.
- Colombia’s inspector general, a vocal critic of the government’s peace talks with the FARC, has publicly criticized the Tuesday announcement by President Juan Manuel Santos of a month-long halt to the aerial campaign against the guerrilla group, accusing Santos of paralyzing the armed forces before the peace process can be concluded.
Southern Cone
- Another 10 contractors who did business with Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras oil firm have been charged as part of a massive corruption scandal that shows no signs of slowing down.
- The leader of the right-wing UDI party in Chile has resigned in connection with a campaign finance corruption scandal, the first politician to do so.
- The government of Rio de Janeiro has solicited help from a high-tech Dutch firm to clean up the Guanabara Bay, which will be used as a sailing venue for the 2016 Summer Olympics but remains stubbornly polluted.
Image: New York Times Retro Report, screenshot
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