Overview
- A jury in Chalatenango found Gen. José Guillermo García, Col. Francisco Morán and Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena guilty of ambushing and killing four IKON TV journalists in June 1982.
- None of the accused appeared at the closed-door trial and each received a 15-year prison sentence under El Salvador’s criminal code.
- The victims—Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemson—were reporting alongside leftist rebels when they walked into a military ambush.
- The case was reopened in 2018 after the Supreme Court declared the post-war amnesty law unconstitutional, ending decades of impunity.
- In March, El Salvador’s Supreme Court approved the extradition of Reyes Mena, who remains in the United States as authorities pursue his return.