Salvador Businessmen Press for Prosecution of Kidnaping Ring

Against a background of haunting choral music and the sound of machine-gun fire, a deep voice boomed from the radio: “The full weight of justice must fall on the kidnapers. Those who profit from anguish must receive their punishment.”

The demand was from a radio commercial by El Salvador’s business sector. Its message: Businessmen want convictions in a kidnap-for-ransom ring that has targeted several wealthy Salvadoran families.

But the ads have caused some skeptical Salvadorans to joke that there may be another message: Justice is underweight.

Several active-duty army officers have been implicated in the multimillion-dollar kidnaping case, initially cited as proof that the tightly knit military establishment finally was willing to move against its own members who commit human rights abuses.

But two officers, one a colonel, who are suspects in the case have fled the country. Another colonel, the commander of the elite U.S.-trained Arce Battalion, was confined for a month but later released because army officials decided there was a shortage of evidence against him.

Three suspects who would have been key witnesses have met violent deaths since the case broke last month. One was found hanged in his cell, another was shot by a night watchman who allegedly believed he was a burglar, and a third was shot by police who said he was trying to escape arrest.

“Well, let’s see,” said a cabdriver who listened to one of the radio ads. “So far, two of the officers are at the beach in Brazil and one is back at his command. And the ones they’re holding, they’ll get off, too.”

A wealthy businessman, an army major, and a former National Guard intelligence officer are being held in the case on charges of arms possession and acts of terrorism.

The radio ads, repeated more often than soap commercials, are a reminder of the violence that has come to be expected in this country where ice cream parlors are guarded by men with machine guns and the well-to-do ride in armored cars with smoked glass and bodyguards.

“It would be difficult to go back to the times when we used to walk the streets or when I would send my children outside with a bicycle,” one businessman said, asking not to be identified.

Six years of civil war have made violence a normal condition in much of the countryside. In the capital, small bombs often destroy telephone exchange boxes and electricity lines. While there are fewer killings than in earlier years, newspapers still report frequent assassinations, unexplained killings, and the discovery of mutilated bodies.

For the rich, who live behind high walls, national airline magazines regularly advertise such items as a bomb-proof automobile with remote-control ignition to detonate explosives and compact devices to detect telephone taps.

As the kidnaping case shows, the wealthy have not only been targets of leftist guerrillas trying to overthrow the U.S.-backed government, but also, apparently, of the right itself and members of the military.

One of the suspects in custody is Lt. Rodolfo Lopez Sibrian, a former National Guard intelligence officer implicated in the 1981 slayings of two American labor advisers and a Salvadoran land reform leader. Lopez Sibrian was never tried for those killings, in what became one of the country’s most famous “death squad” cases, despite intense pressure from the United States and assertions by the gunmen that he gave the orders.

Also charged are Lopez Sibrian’s father-in-law, businessman Orlando Llovera Ballete, and Army Maj. Alfredo Jimenez Moreno. Three other suspects--Col. Joaquin Eduardo Zacapa, Lt. Carlos Zacapa and businessman Victor Antonio Cornejo Arango--have fled the country.

The men accused of participating in the kidnaping case are close friends of Roberto D’Aubuisson, the former leader of the rightist Arena party. D’Aubuisson was accused by former U.S. Ambassador Robert E. White of being involved in political death squad activities in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the 1980 assassination of Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in San Salvador.

During that period, thousands of students, teachers, church workers, union leaders and peasants were killed or disappeared as the military and death squads hunted guerrillas.

D’Aubuisson has denied any involvement in death squad activity and has not been tied to the kidnaping ring, sources close to the case say. He reportedly turned in one of the principal suspects, his longtime associate, Lopez Sibrian.

One military source recalled that many of the suspects were with D’Aubuisson at a ranch west of San Salvador when he was arrested in 1980 for planning a coup against a ruling junta. Arrested with him were Lopez Sibrian, Col. Zacapa, Cornejo and Col. Mauricio Staben.

Staben, commander of the Arce Battalion, was removed from his post for a month after Llovera and Lopez Sibrian accused him of being chief of operations and accepting ransom money in at least three of the five kidnapings blamed on the ring. Staben denied the charges.

To the anger of the civilian government and the business sector, Staben was returned to his post last month for lack of evidence. He was never formally charged.

Minister of Defense Carlos Vides Casanova, President Jose Napoleon Duarte and Chief of Staff Adolfo Blandon all have vowed to pursue the case “to the end, no matter who turns out to be involved.”

But one civilian source who asked not to be identified said he believes Staben was returned to duty because of his relationship with Vides Casanova, who had pushed for Staben’s appointment to head the Arce Battalion despite opposition from Duarte.

The source asserted that there is not enough evidence against Staben because the military did not look hard enough for evidence.

“They have treated him too well, with much affection,” he said, adding that Staben was not interrogated to the extent that others were and refused to take a lie detector test. “Why not let the courts decide if there is enough evidence?” he asked.

Staben graduated from the Military School in 1966, as a member of its largest and subsequently most influential graduating class. Typically, each class looks out for its own members. While military sources say Staben’s class did not interfere with the investigation, one military source said, “His classmates are watching to make sure he is not treated unfairly.”

Several military and government sources close to the case who asked not to be identified said there is some evidence that the kidnapers once dealt in political violence. The sources say they believe that underground cells at Lopez Sibrian’s house and at a farm where the kidnap victims were held for months at a time were initially built as clandestine jails for suspected leftists. They also said that among the arms caches found at the kidnapers’ safe houses were grenade launchers and plastic explosives, weapons that were not used in the kidnapings.

Sources close to the investigation say they are certain the kidnaping case will not lead to prosecution of the suspects for possible political crimes. The question now, they say, is whether any of the officers implicated will be convicted in the kidnaping case.

No military officer has ever been charged or convicted of a political crime or human rights abuse. But sources say the military views the kidnaping-for-profit differently.

“People are asking how they could get themselves into this. That’s really biting the hand that feeds you. The senior officers align themselves with the right wing. You kidnap that group and it goes against the grain,” one source said.

There is physical evidence as well as confessions and testimony of witnesses against Llovera, Lopez Sibrian and Jimenez, sources say.

Since the investigation began, the government changed a law that used to prevent the testimony of an accused person from being used against another defendant.

But observers say that the suspects all have powerful friends and are clever defendants. Jimenez is reported to have lied on all of the questions on his lie detector test to skew the results, and Lopez Sibrian is reported to have named “half of the armed forces” as members of the kidnap ring to try to cast doubt on his testimony.