http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/17/world/6-priests-killed-in-a-campus-raid-in-san-salvador.html

November 17, 1989

6 Priests Killed in a Campus Raid in San Salvador

By LINDSEY GRUSON, Special to The New York Times

SAN SALVADOR, Nov. 16--Six Jesuit priests, including the rector of a leading university, were killed here before dawn today by what one witness described as a group of 30 men dressed in military uniforms.

Most of the priests were dragged from their beds in cubicles in a dormitory at the Jose Simeon Canas University of Central America on the outskirts of the capital and shot in the head with high-powered rifles, apparently of the same type issued by the army. The Jesuits' cook and her 15-year-old daughter were also shot to death.

''They were assassinated with lavish barbarity'' said the Rev. Jose Maria Tojeira, the Jesuit Provincial for Central America. ''For example, they took out their brains.''

Torture Is Reported

He said the victims were tortured before they were killed, though this could not be independently confirmed.

In Washington, the Bush Administration condemned the killings ''in the strongest possible terms,'' and said it had asked the Salvadoran President, Alfredo Cristiani, to make a full inquiry. Colleagues of the dead priests and some human rights monitors blamed the army or right-wing death squads for the killings, which provoked outrage here. They noted that only Government forces were able to move freely during the dawn-to-dusk curfew now in effect.

Government Vows Inquiry

The Government denied it was responsible and denounced the killings. It promised an investigation and said the rebels had the most compelling motive for the slayings, strongly hinting that the rebels were responsible.

If the army is found to have been responsible for the killings, this would probably cause severe strains in its relations with the United States, which has been the Salvadoran Government's chief supporter for more than a decade. It has supplied the Government with hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic aid and an American military advisory team has been involved for most of that period in helping to train Salvadoran armed forces.

The killings came during a major military offensive by leftist guerrillas that began on Saturday night and has touched off the fiercest fighting in the decade-old civil war, which has claimed 70,000 lives.

Soldiers Ring University

A letter issued in Washington by Americas Watch, a human rights organization, said that for the last several days, a large contingent of soldiers had surrounded the Jesuit university grounds and that a group of soldiers had searched the rectory where the priests were killed.

Persuasive evidence has often linked the army and the governing party -the Nationalist Republican Alliance, known by its Spanish acronym, Arena - to the death squads. In the early 1980's, they marked for assassination those who tried to organize the left or criticize the right.

Until the shootings today, the most notorious attack occurred in March 1980 when Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of San Salvador was shot to death as he was saying Mass in the chapel of a hospital. Political opponents of Roberto d'Aubuisson, the leader of Arena, accused him of responsibility for the killing.

The victims of today's killings included Ignacio Ellacuria Beas Coechea, the rector of the university, who was a critic of right-wing violence; Ignacio Martin-Baro, the Vice Rector and a leading expert on Salvadoran public opinion, and Segundo Montes, the dean of the school's department of social sciences. The three other slain priests were identified by colleagues as Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, Amando Lopez and Juan Ramon Moreno. The Jesuit's cook, Julia Elba Ramos, and her daughter, Celina, were found shot to death in the bed they shared.

''They did not want to leave witnesses,'' said Eduardo Valdez, director of Jesuit studies at the university, which is considered one of the best in the region.

An employee of the university who said he saw the killings of the six priests told their colleagues that about 30 men broke into the back of the rectory shortly after 3 A.M.

According this account, the intruders tossed a bomb into the one-story, stucco building, and shot two of the priests in their sleeping cubicles and then killed the cook and her daughter.

Colleagues of the victims said the witness had told them that the three other priests were dragged from their beds. The attackers then went next door to Father Ellacuria's small home, gathered the four men on the lawn and killed them.

A sign left with the bodies saying the killings were the work of rebels was being widely dismissed by the colleagues of the priests as amateurish dissimulation.

'Crime of Such Repugnance'

The United States Ambassador, William J. Walker, denounced the crime and said it played into the hands of the rebels. But he acknowledged that an investigation would be almost impossible during the current heavy fighting.

''This is a crime of such repugnance that to say that I condemn or deplore seems inadequate,'' he said in a briefing. ''It is a barbaric act that has brought shame to El Salvador.''

''I have difficulty in imagining what sort of animals would, in cold blood, execute priests, and other innocents,'' he said.

The killings came a day after Mr. d'Aubuisson issued a thinly veiled threat against rebel sympathizers. He warned Salvadorans who had known about the coming rebel offensive but had not informed the Government. In the past, death squads have often followed up similar warnings by killing those Mr. d'Aubuisson had publicly criticized.

In testimony before a Congressional committee, Robert White, the former United States Ambasador to Salvador, referred to Mr. d'Aubuisson as a ''pathological killer,'' saying the State Department had ''compelling if not 100 percent convincing evidence'' that he had ordered the killing of Archbishop Romero.

Had Been Shunned by U.S.

Mr. d'Aubuisson had been shunned by American officials since 1984 when the United States learned that he had reportedly ordered the killing of Thomas Pickering, then the American Ambassador. That policy of ostracism was ended when Vice President Quayle met with Mr. d'Aubuisson last June.

The university, which was started as an alternative to the radicalized National University, is one of the most highly respected in Central America. But for more than a decade the extreme right has accused its Jesuit teachers of favoring the rebels and fostering subversion.