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<P>US court orders man behind death-squad killing of El Salvador's archbishop to
pay $10m in damages</P>
<P>By Andrew Buncombe</P>
<P>05 September 2004</P>
<P></P>
<P>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=558351</P>
<P>Almost 25 years after El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot with a
single bullet in the heart as he said Mass, a court in the United States has
found someone responsible for his murder.</P>
<P>A federal judge in California found that a retired Salvadoran air force
captain, Alvaro Saravia, who has lived in the US for almost 20 years, was liable
for the killing and ordered him to pay $10m (£5.7m) in damages.</P>
<P>Mr Saravia, who has not been seen since the charges were filed against him
last September, was not in court. "To be liable for the killing of a human
being, you don't have to pull the trigger," Judge Oliver Wanger told about 100
spectators at the courtroom in Fresno, California, many of them Salvadoran. The
visitors erupted in applause, and many in attendance began weeping.</P>
<P>The Catholic Church has taken the first step toward the canonisation of
Archbishop Romero, who was an outspoken critic of US military and financial
support for right-wing governments in central America and of state-sponsored
violence.</P>
<P>A quarter of a century after his death, he remains revered for his support of
the poor and of those working for social change.</P>
<P>The hearing was brought on behalf of one of Archbishop Romero's relatives
under a law that allows foreign nationals with US connections to be sued for
crimes such as torture or genocide. The court heard how Mr Saravia had helped
conspire to kill the priest along with his boss, Roberto D'Aubusson, an army
major who died in 1992 and had led a network of death squads.The court heard how
Mr Saravia had ordered his driver to take the gunman to the chapel in San
Salvador, the capital of the small central American country, where he was saying
Mass on the evening of 24 March 1980.</P>
<P>The judge said: "Here the evidence shows that there was a consistent and
unabating regime that was in control of El Salvador, and that this regime
essentially functioned as a militarily controlled government." The government
perpetrated "systematic violations of human rights for the purpose of
perpetuating the oligarchy and the military government".</P>
<P>Judge Wanger also concluded that what happened in El Salvador was the
"antithesis of due process" and that there could not be a better example of
extrajudicial killing than the murder of Archbishop Romero.</P>
<P>The case was brought by the San Francisco-based Centre for Justice and
Accountability. The CJA's litigation director, Matt Eisenbrandt, said: "This
decision ensures that the United States will no longer be a safe haven for those
responsible for this heinous crime. This verdict provides sufficient grounds for
the immigration service to place Saravia in deportation proceedings."
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