Salvador Amnesty Denied to Killers of Churchwomen

A judge refused Friday to grant amnesty to the five national guardsmen convicted of murdering four American churchwomen in 1980, a court official said.

Three of the five men, all of whom are serving 30-year sentences, had petitioned for release under a general amnesty extended by the government Nov. 5 as part of a Central American peace plan.

Judge Consuelo Salazar de Revelo turned down the request in 1st Criminal Court in Zacatecoluca, 35 miles southeast of the capital, court secretary Antonio Diaz reported. The amnesty covered political offenses, but Salazar ruled that the slayings were common crimes, Diaz said in a telephone interview.

Luis Antonio Colindres Aleman, Carlos Joaquin Contreras Palacios and Jose Roberto Moreno had petitioned for the amnesty. If granted, it also would have applied to the other guardsmen, Daniel Canales and Francisco Orlando Contreras.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Jacob Gillespie said he had received no official report of the decision, but said it “goes along with what we think about it.”

The embassy had said it was “appalled” by the release last month under the amnesty law of two former guardsmen serving 30-year sentences for the 1981 murder of two American land reform advisers.

The AFL-CIO on Thursday asked the Reagan Administration to suspend military aid to El Salvador in response to the pair’s release.

State Department officials in Washington said after their release that they planned to review a $9-million aid program designed to improve El Salvador’s judiciary but indicated they would not question military aid to this country.

The United States provided $116.5 million in military aid and $300 million in non-military assistance to the Salvadoran government in 1987 to support a war against Marxist-led guerrillas that dates to early 1980.

The five guardsmen charged in the churchwomen’s killings were convicted in May, 1984, of killing Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel, 41, and lay worker Jean Donovan, 27, both of Cleveland; and Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford, 40, and Maura Clark, 49, both of New York.

The treatment of cases involving Americans killed in El Salvador has prompted the U.S. Congress to call for reductions or delays in aid.