Former Salvadoran Military Officer Is Determined to Have Assisted in Torture and Murder

This week a U.S. immigration judge in Orlando, Florida after trial found that former Salvadoran General and Minister of Defense Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova had assisted in acts of torture and murder committed by soldiers under his command. Now he is subject to further proceedings potentially leading to his deportation from the U.S. where he has lived for many years as a legal resident.

One of the cases which Vides Casanova was determined to have assisted was the December 1980 rape, torture and murder of four American churchwomen by five Salvadoran National Guardsmen. At the time Vides Casanova was the Commander of the Guard. (We already have examined the mission work of the churchwomen, the early investigations of this horrendous crime, the Salvadoran criminal prosecution of the Guardsmen and the Salvadoran Truth Commission’s investigation of the crime.)

The immigration judge also concluded that Vides Casanova had assisted in the torture of two Salvadorans, Juan Romagoza and Daniel Alvarado, who testified against him in hearings last spring in the immigration court in Orlando.

In 2005 Vides Casanova and his fellow former Salvadoran General and Minister of Defense Jose Guillermo Garcia were held liable in U.S. federal court for $54.6 million under the U.S. Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA). This civil case was brought by Romagoza and Alvarado and another Salvadoran refugee for their torture by Salvadoran military personnel during the period 1979 to 1983.

Earlier Vides Casanova and Garcia had defeated similar civil claims in U.S. federal court over the torture, rapes and murders of the four American churchwomen.

Earlier posts have reviewed the enactment of the TVPA and the history of the Alien Tort Statute for the periods 1789-1979, 1980, 1980-2004, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2004 and 2004-present.

The current deportation case was brought by the Human Rights Violators & War Crimes Center, which is a unit of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement created in 2003 to focus on preventing rights violators from entering this country and deporting those already here.