Salvador Soldier Says Army Ordered Murders of Leftists

A Salvadoran soldier who acknowledges taking part in eight death-squad murders said Thursday that his orders came from the Salvadoran military high command and that U.S. advisers “had to know what was going on.”

“My job was to kill or be killed,” said Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, 28, who told of being a member of a special forces group of the 1st Infantry Brigade in the capital of San Salvador until he fled the country in July. He said his job from April until July of this year was to capture and kill suspected leftist guerrillas.

The Salvadoran military has denied Joya Martinez’s allegations, which surfaced two weeks ago. The Pentagon, in a statement issued Thursday, called claims of U.S. complicity in death-squad activity “patently absurd.”

However, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador said that Ambassador William Walker “considers the charges very serious” and “if they are truthful, they must be investigated.”

Joya Martinez outlined his charges to U.S. reporters in Washington. He said his orders were issued by the Salvadoran Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said he took part in eight killings but that the reports he saw indicated 72 people were killed from April to July.