Overview

• Three retired officers—Gen. José Guillermo García, Col. Francisco Morán and Col. Mario Reyes Mena—are on trial for the ambush that killed Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemsen.
• The sealed hearing in Chalatenango is scheduled to wrap on June 4 with a five-member jury delivering its verdict.
• The case was revived in 2018 after the Supreme Court struck down a general amnesty for civil war crimes as unconstitutional.
• Reyes Mena remains in the United States under an unfulfilled extradition request while García and Morán are held under police guard in a San Salvador hospital.
• Families of the journalists and human rights groups have called the trial a decisive step toward accountability for civil war-era abuses.