Lawsuit Filed in US Against Former Salvadoran Colonel for 1982 Killings of Dutch Journalists

A significant legal development has emerged in the United States involving a former Salvadoran military officer accused of orchestrating the killings of Dutch journalists during El Salvador‘s civil war. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, an 85-year-old former colonel, is the target of a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, by the brother of one of the slain journalists, Jan Kuiper.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and a declaration of responsibility for the deaths of Kuiper and three other Dutch journalists: Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag, and Joop Willemsen. The journalists were ambushed in 1982 while attempting to travel to territory controlled by a leftist guerrilla group. The United Nations Truth Commission, established in 1992, identified Reyes Mena and his unit, the Fourth Infantry Brigade, as responsible for the killings.

The civil war in El Salvador resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75,000 civilians, primarily at the hands of U.S.-backed government security forces. Despite the truth commission’s findings, Reyes Mena and other military officers were shielded from prosecution by an amnesty law passed shortly after the commission’s report. However, El Salvador’s Supreme Court struck down this amnesty law as unconstitutional in 2016, paving the way for potential legal action.

In 2022, a judge ordered the arrest of Reyes Mena and other former military officials in connection with the journalists’ killings. However, there is currently no indication that Reyes Mena will be extradited, despite an Interpol notice seeking his arrest. The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Justice and Accountability, a nonprofit legal group that has previously brought cases against individuals accused of overseas war crimes under U.S. laws.