Salvador Massacre Suspect Was Deported From U.S.

One of the three suspects being held in a cafe massacre in which four U.S. Marines were killed was deported from the United States just before his arrest here, Salvadoran authorities said Wednesday.

Col. Carlos Reynaldo Lopez Nuila, vice minister of defense and public security, told a press conference that Juan Miguel Garcia Melendez fled to the United States after the June 19 attack on sidewalk cafes in San Salvador’s fashionable Zona Rosa district that left 13 people dead, including four off-duty Marines.

Garcia Melendez entered the United States illegally from Mexico and was picked up by immigration agents in a raid in San Diego, Lopez Nuila said. He was arrested at San Salvador’s international airport as he returned here Aug. 16. He was identified on the basis of a composite sketch and information provided by the other two suspects, Lopez Nuila said.

Eleven men are suspected of the massacre. Of those, the other two in custody were captured at an upholstery shop in downtown San Salvador four days before Garcia Melendez’s arrest, Lopez Nuila said. A fourth suspect was slain during the June 19 attack.

There was no explanation as to why two weeks elapsed between the first two arrests and their announcement Tuesday.

Although the Salvadoran government moved quickly in the Zona Rosa case, it still has not resolved at least a dozen other killings that have long concerned human rights activists and the U.S. government.

The attorney general’s office recently took steps to reopen investigations into the March, 1980, assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero and the January, 1981, murders of two U.S. labor advisers and a Salvadoran agrarian reform official. Both cases had been inactive for lack of evidence.

Human rights activists and critics of the government charge that the two cases have not been pursued as aggressively as was the guerrilla attack on the Zona Rosa (Pink Zone).

Michael Posner, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, said his group is pleased with the progress of the Zona Rosa case but added, “The same level of vigilance that went into this case is not apparent in other cases where military and security forces seem to be involved.”

The Reagan Administration on Wednesday congratulated President Jose Napoleon Duarte for the “speed and efficiency” of the investigation into the Zona Rosa attack.

On Tuesday, Duarte announced that the three suspects, all members of the Central American Workers Revolutionary Party, had been arrested in the case. The guerrilla group, a faction of the umbrella Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, claimed responsibility for the slayings.

The inquiry into the Zona Rosa attack was the first case handled by a 25-member special investigative unit that was established amid much controversy last year and trained by the FBI in Puerto Rico.

Right-wing politicians from the Arena party had opposed the formation of the investigative unit under the authority of the president, saying that the constitution required it to be under the authority of the attorney general.

Attorney General Replaced

The attorney general at the time was an Arena party member. The National Assembly, which is now controlled by Duarte’s Christian Democratic Party, has since replaced the Arena attorney general with Santiago Mendoza Aguilar, a self-described political independent who is responsible for reopening the investigations into the deaths of Romero and the labor advisers.

Armando Calderon Sol, an Arena party assemblyman, said that the direction of the unit leaves the government open to charges that it pursued the Zona Rosa case for political reasons “because the United States is helping us in our fight” against the guerrilla insurgency.

“We believe the commission could have had equal or better results with more credibility if it abided by the constitution,” Calderon Sol said.

A U.S. Embassy official said he believes that the Zona Rosa case proceeded quickly because of the special investigative unit.

“The reason this was resolved so quickly is not because of political will or because one case was on the front burner or another on the back burner,” the official said. “There’s no question every part of the security forces was eager to work on this. But more importantly, they had the means available to do so. They were trained, they knew how to investigate and that sped the investigation.”

The U.S. government provided information to help with the investigation of the Zona Rosa case but did not participate directly, U.S. officials said.

After the Zona Rosa massacre, it was reported that the Reagan Administration had assembled a $53-million military and police assistance package for U.S. allies in Central America. Of that, $22 million was earmarked for El Salvador.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Congress banned training of foreign police forces, many of which were charged with human rights violations.

Last month, Congress lifted the training ban for El Salvador and Honduras beginning Oct. 1. Before the Administration sends aid, it must give Congress 30 days’ notice and certify that the government has made significant progress against human rights violations in the preceding six months.

The U.S. government also has been seeking arrests of those responsible for the assassinations of Mark D. Pearlman and Michael P. Hammer, two labor advisers affiliated with the AFL-CIO, who were killed at the coffee shop of the Sheraton Hotel here along with Rodolfo Viera, president of the Salvadoran agency responsible for agrarian reform.

In late June, two Americans and a Costa Rican testified that Capt. Eduardo Avila of the Salvadoran army told them that he provided weapons and was present at the murders. However, a judge decided that there was not enough evidence to bring Avila to trial.

Two former national guardsmen are awaiting trial for the killings, but prosecutors believe they were only acting on the orders of others.

Calls for Testimony

Atty. Gen. Mendoza Aguilar called for new witnesses in the case of Archbishop Romero this month. So far, only one statement has been taken in the case.

During the 1984 presidential elections, Arena party leader Roberto D’Aubuisson presented a videotape of ex-convict Adalberto Salazar Collier, saying Collier participated in the slaying on behalf of guerrillas, but government officials said he was in jail at the time of the killing. D’Aubuisson has been accused of helping to plot the assassination.

Critics of the government charge that the activity on the Romero and Sheraton cafe cases are more show than substance.

“They are handy to show that the government not only goes after the left but goes after the right,” said a critic who asked not to be identified. “From a judicial perspective, they will go nowhere.”

Other cases still to be resolved include the March, 1982, killing of four Dutch journalists; the February, 1983, army massacre of at least 18 civilians at the Las Hojas farming cooperative, and the May, 1983, killing of Lt. Cmdr. Albert A. Schaufelberger III, deputy commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Group, who was shot at the University of Central America here as he waited for his girlfriend.

Besides the four Marines, Schaufelberger is the only other U.S. military figure to have been killed in El Salvador’s six-year civil war.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this story.