The World - News from Feb. 5, 1988

President Jose Napoleon Duarte must decide if three men charged in the killings of four U.S. Marines and two other Americans at a cafe in San Salvador in 1985 should be freed under an amnesty, the country’s highest military court ruled. Rene Valdivieso, secretary of the three-member court, said the panel has rejected the government’s appeal of a decision that would free the men and had sent the case to Duarte. A military judge last November decreed that the three should be freed under an amnesty declared by Duarte as part of the country’s compliance with a Central American peace plan--an action that drew a U.S. threat to withhold some aid to El Salvador.