Two former generals from El Salvador have been ordered to pay $54.6 million in damages to three Salvadorans, one of them a church worker, after a jury decided that the men were responsible for security forces that tortured the Salvadorans during their country's 12-year civil war

Christian Century, August 14, 2002

* Two former generals from El Salvador have been ordered to pay $54.6 million in damages to three Salvadorans, one of them a church worker, after a jury decided that the men were responsible for security forces that tortured the Salvadorans during their country's 12-year civil war. The decision by a U.S.

federal jury was a stinging rebuke for Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who, like the three victims, now reside in the U.S. Two years ago, the two retired military officers were cleared by another federal jury in the state of Florida of responsibility for the 1980 murders of four U.S. churchwomen who were working in El Salvador. In its July 23 decision, the jury in West Palm Beach, Florida, determined that the two former defense ministers bore responsibility for the torture of the three civilians. The verdict was something of a landmark, said a statement from the Center for Justice and Accountability, the San Francisco human rights group that initiated the case. It was one of the few cases since World War II in which commanders were held liable for war crimes committed by troops--a legal theory called "command responsibility."