Salvadoran Officers May Be Tried in U.S.

The Clinton Administration may try to thwart El Salvador’s controversial new amnesty law by bringing its military officers to trial in American courts for human rights abuses committed during the Central American country’s bloody 11-year civil war, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Thursday.

In testimony to a House Appropriations subcommittee, he also said he is determined to ensure that the State Department will never mislead Congress about atrocities committed by friendly countries. Some critics accuse the Ronald Reagan Administration of deceiving lawmakers about such acts in El Salvador.

Shortly after the U.N.-appointed Commission on Truth accused the Salvadoran army of widespread abuses last week, right-wing parties in that country’s National Assembly pushed through an amnesty law barring prosecution of army personnel and rebel leaders for crimes committed during the civil war.

But international law may permit prosecutions in foreign courts, Christopher said, especially for those accused of murder and other crimes against foreign nationals. Several Americans were among the 75,000 people killed during the conflict.

“Under international law, at least the citizens of other countries (might) have a right to proceed, despite the amnesty,” he said. “And we’re having our lawyers look at that to see if there’s an overriding principle of international law that would pierce the efforts of the Salvadoran government to provide this broad-scale amnesty.”

On Wednesday, Christopher appointed a committee, headed by retired diplomats George Vest and Richard Murphy, to investigate the “conduct and activities” of State Department and U.S. Embassy officials in San Salvador during the conflict.

In testimony Thursday, Christopher said the purpose of the investigation is to prevent abuses in the future, not to punish those who may have misinformed Congress a decade ago.

“I want to make sure that our human rights reporting (is) not in some way stifled by political considerations,” he said.

“I don’t want this to be in any way a witch hunt,” he added. “It really is not retrospective; it’s really trying to look to the future to see how we can be sure that our embassy officers accurately report and that reporting is brought here to Washington in a proper way.”

The Reagan Administration provided millions of dollars in aid, training and equipment to the Salvadoran government, helping to support its fight against Marxist guerrillas.