Morales was the vice-minister for public security of El-Salvador during the civil war in the 1980s. He was convicted on the 11th of September of planning and ordering the killing of five Jesuit priests, all of whom were Spanish, at the Central American University in San Salvador.

Besides the Spanish Jesuits, a Salvadorian priest, their housekeeper and her daughter were also killed, but the former colonel was convicted in Spain only of the killings of the five Spanish Jesuits.

Montano maintained his innocence at the Spanish court, stating that he believed the Jesuits were collaborators of the Marxist guerilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which El Salvador’s military junta fought in a bloody civil war that spanned more than a decade

The Jesuit priests in El-Salvador were working on establishing peace between the two opponents, and they did not enter in collaboration with either of the parties.

Now, decades after the civil war, the U.S. State Department revealed, it had credible information that the thirteen former Salvadoran military personnel “were involved in the planning and execution of the extrajudicial killings” in November 1989.

Source, photo: CNA