United States Department of Justice orders deportation for serious human rights violations

San Salvador/Washington D.C., March 27, 2015. On March 11, the U.S. Department of Justice upheld the deportation order of General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, former Defense Minister of El Salvador and Director of the Salvadoran National Guard, for his participation in serious human rights violations during the armed conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s.

The deportation order is based on U.S. laws that require the removal of any alien who has ordered, participated, or assisted in the commission of human rights violations. This law takes account of command responsibility, whereby high-ranking military officers are held accountable if they knew that their subordinates were carrying out crimes of this nature and did nothing to prevent them or to punish the perpetrators.

Accordingly, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) of the Department of Justice, the highest administrative body for immigration matters, affirmed the 2012 decision of an immigration judge ordering Vides Casanova’s deportation. The decision, handed down by Judge James K. Grim, puts an end to the administrative appeals process that Vides Casanova began on May 9, 2012 but is subject to further appeal.

Vides Casanova headed the Salvadoran National Guard from 1979 to 1983, when he was appointed Minister of Defense, and held both positions during the bloodiest years of the armed conflict that left more than 75,000 dead and 10,000 disappeared in El Salvador, according to the Truth Commission.

The acts supporting his deportation include obstructing the investigation into the arbitrary detention, sexual abuse, and murder of four U.S. church workers by members of the National Guard, and providing cover for the perpetrators of the Las Hojas Massacre, in which 70 people were murdered.

As National Guard Director, Vides Casanova is also alleged to have been responsible for the El Sumpul Massacre in the Department of Chalatenango, where at least 700 people were murdered in 1980.

In the opinion of the undersigned national and international organizations, the deportation of General Vides Casanova is a lawful mechanism for keeping the perpetrators of serious human rights violations from escaping justice in their own country, as well as an important step in establishing the truth of what happened.

The deportation order does not replace criminal proceedings. Therefore, El Salvador must investigate and punish the acts attributed to the former Defense Minister through the courts and the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, given that they are serious human rights violations not subject to amnesty or statutes of limitations.

National reconciliation cannot be obtained by denying the history and rights of the victims, but rather must be pursued through truth and justice.