Charges Likely in Killing of 2 Americans

Unexpected testimony from three witnesses is expected to lead to criminal charges against a military officer linked to the 1981 slaying of a Salvadoran land reform official and two American labor advisers, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said Wednesday.

The witnesses all said that the officer, Capt. Eduardo Avila, told them he ordered the slayings, helped plan them and supplied the submachine guns used. The three witnesses made sworn statements Wednesday to the 5th Penal Court in San Salvador, which is handling the case.

The case is considered explosive in El Salvador because it would be the first time that an officer has been linked in court to a political murder. A successful prosecution could unravel the pattern of death squad activity in El Salvador because of the relationship of some of the alleged participants with wealthy, right-wing Salvadorans and officials in the country’s military.

Priority for Prosecution

The U.S.-backed government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte has given this case priority for prosecution.

Washington, sensitive to the human rights image of the Duarte government, also has pressed for prosecution.

The victims of the shootings were Rodolfo Viera, then head of El Salvador’s land redistribution agency, and two U.S. labor advisers affiliated with the AFL-CIO, Mark D. Pearlman and Michael P. Hammer. The three men were gunned down while dining in the coffee shop of San Salvador’s Sheraton Hotel.

The apparent break in the case came after many months of frustration for U.S. officials.

The alleged assassins, two national guardsmen, are both in jail and are scheduled to stand trial this summer. Both have linked Avila to the slayings, but under Salvadoran law, their testimony can not be used to implicate anyone else.

Statute of Limitations

Last year, El Salvador’s courts dropped charges against another suspect in the case, Lt. Rodolfo Lopez Sibrian, ruling that the statute of limitations had expired. Lopez Sibrian was discharged from the army on Duarte’s orders, under strong pressure from the U.S. Embassy.

Ironically, U.S. Embassy officials had hoped to solidify a case against Lopez Sibrian using testimony from Avila. But last June, Avila told a judge he knew nothing about the Sheraton coffee shop murders.

Avila is no longer on active duty with the armed forces but remains in a reserve status, supposedly to ensure that he does not flee the country.

Both Lopez Sibrian and Avila served in the National Guard’s intelligence department, a unit that was feared for reportedly having a virtual license to kill during the early 1980s.

Three Witnesses Appear

U.S. Embassy spokesman Donald Hamilton listed the three witnesses as U.S. Army Col. Gerald Walker, who was a former defense attache at the U.S. Embassy here, his wife-whose name was not immediately available--and Carlos Aguilar, a Costa Rican citizen and acquaintance of Avila.

According to Hamilton, the Walkers said that during a 1982 visit to their home in Panama, Avila confessed ‘tearfully’ that he was present during the planning of the killings, provided the weapons and witnessed the slayings.

Hamilton said that Walker immediately told the U.S. government what he knew, although it wasn’t clear why he was brought to San Salvador to testify only now, some three years later.

Businessman Implicated

Aguilar’s testimony came to the attention of U.S. investigators through unamed sources. According to Hamilton, Aguilar said that Avila confessed being present with Lopez Sibrian and Hans Christ, a rightist businessman, when the plot to kill the three men was hatched.

The only other major human rights case successfully prosecuted in El Salvador involved five guardsmen found guilty of the 1980 slaying of four U.S. churchwomen.

The verdict in that trial came last May and was shepherded from beginning to end by U.S. Embassy officials with the help of the FBI and lawyers from the State Department.