US agents arrest retired Salvadoran military colonel implicated in 1981 El Mozote massacre

San Salvador: According to a statement released on Thursday, US agents detained a retired Salvadoran military colonel this week on suspicion of engaging in a terrible slaughter of people during El Salvador’s long civil war in the 1980s.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents captured Roberto Garay in the state of New Jersey on Tuesday, according to the agency.

From 1981 until 1985, Garay was the section commander of the Atlacatl Battalion, a unique military force.

Retired Salvadoran general Juan Rafael Bustillo acknowledged in 2020 that Atlacatl was responsible for the notorious 1981 El Mozote massacre, in which more than 1,0000 villagers, mostly women and children, were slaughtered.

The battalion carried out extrajudicial executions at El Mozote, as well as in three other massacres in which “hundreds of noncombatant civilians” were killed, ICE said.

Garay then “willfully” misrepresented his involvement in the massacre from an immigration application he had submitted, according to the statement.

Reuters was not immediately able to locate Garay’s lawyer.

One of several bloody Central American conflicts linked to the Cold War, El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war pitted the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebels against the army of the US-backed right-wing government.

The war left some 75,000 dead and another 8,000 missing.

Touting the agency’s investigation team that aims to hold accused war criminals accountable, ICE stressed that individuals like Garay must be investigated, prosecuted and expelled from the United States.

“Individuals who have committed atrocities overseas will not find safe haven in the United States,” Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security John K. Tien said in the statement.

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