http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/21/world/trial-of-salvadoran-generals-in-nuns-deaths-hears-echoes-of-1980.html

October 21, 2000

Trial of Salvadoran Generals in Nuns' Deaths Hears Echoes of 1980

By DAVID GONZALEZ

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Oct. 20 -- ''I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you,'' Sister Ita Ford once wrote to a teenage niece. ''Something worth living for, maybe even dying for.''

Those words remind her family and friends of the faith that led Sister Ita and three other Roman Catholic churchwomen to El Salvador and, ultimately, to their deaths at the hands of the Salvadoran National Guard in 1980. Faith has sustained their survivors, as they waited for the day when they could face the generals they say were responsible for the climate of violence that led to the rapes and killings of the four.

For two weeks, the families have gone to the federal courthouse here to watch two retired generals, Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, defend themselves in a wrongful-death suit brought by the families of Sister Ita, Sisters Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel, and a lay missionary, Jean Donovan. Each day, friends and relatives follow the case, looking for justice, truth or some sense to emerge from a faraway war and a complicated time.

''You live with the question and hope the answers will come out here,'' said Sister Madeline Dorsey, a Maryknoll nun who also worked in El Salvador. ''We see so many connections with the victims and the causes of violence, and you hope the truth this time will come blasting out. I guess the hope is that the truth will be revealed and there will be an end to impunity.''

Five National Guard members were convicted in the murders. No higher-ranking officer has been held accountable.

The trial has been fraught with details about the 12-year civil war that claimed 75,000 lives -- how death squads singled out priests, doctors, political opponents and villagers caught between the two sides. The generals, now living here, have testified that they lamented the violence, but that never knew who was behind it. They insisted that they never obstructed investigations, even though international reports and embassy cables said they knew much and did little.

The suit is one of the few under the Torture Victims Protection Act in which the defendants have faced the charges. The former generals arrive together each day, without friends or family, because, as one of them said, they saw no need to subject them to the proceedings.

Although interest in the trial has not been overwhelming in El Salvador, there are signs that it has had some effects. This week, prosecutors said they might reopen the case of six Jesuits who were slain, along with their housekeeper and her daughter, by soldiers in 1989.

The major Salvadoran dailies have reported from the trial, but the right-wing El Diario de Hoy has often omitted references to death squads. It has recently preferred to run articles on how the leftist Sandinistas of Nicaragua helped the Salvadoran rebels.

Echoes of anti-Communist arguments have also come from the family of Mr. Vides Casanova, who was director of the guard when the women were killed. In paid newspaper advertisements, they disparagingly call the women the ''little nuns,'' while likening the generals to Davids who will ultimately triumph against the Goliaths who brought the case.

Human rights advocates said the case was being closely watched by officers in El Salvador, Guatemala and elsewhere who are concerned that although the conflicts ended with amnesties they could still be prosecuted for atrocities. At the same time, it is an important part of the postwar reconciliation.

''Many people I talked to in El Salvador stressed the goal is not to punish,'' said Ken Hurwitz, a consultant to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which helped build the case against the generals. ''The goal is to have the truth.''

That hope brought several people from El Salvador to watch the trial. Some of them have their own cases pending here against the military. To them, the case gives them the encouragement that they never had in El Salvador, where the courts and politicians have been reluctant to pursue any such trials.

The international aspects have always been a concern for the women's families. They questioned why the United States sent so much aid to a country whose military killed civilians. And they were astonished to learn a few years ago that the two generals had retired to Florida in 1989.

''None of us had any idea they were living in the United States,'' Jean Donovan's brother Mike said. ''I guess our government had other priorities than resolving the murder of my sister.''