The Second Instance judge of San Francisco Gotera, Mirtala Portillo de Cruz, in charge of the process for the alleged massacre in 1981 of a hundred civilians during the civil war in El Mozote, once again ordered the provisional arrest of the octogenarian Rubén Zamora, former candidate presidential candidate, former diplomat, political analyst and critic of Nayib Bukele’s government, in an accusation that represents a “mockery” for the alleged victims, Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced on Wednesday.
“A judge once again ordered the arrest of human rights defender Rubén Zamora. The judge had ordered her release but 3 days later she revoked the ruling without informing Zamora, the director of the Americas Division of HRW, Juanita Goebertus, noted on the social network X.
So far, Zamora has not been arrested, according to the information available, however, the judge would have committed prevarication (arbitrary resolution in an administrative or judicial matter knowing that said resolution is unjust), by not notifying of the revocation of freedom . “Yes, it’s terrible, they weren’t even notified.»confirmed one of the daughters, adding that “there is no legal security or rule of law in El Salvador.”
At the end of last December, the judge had already ordered provisional prison against former president Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994) and the former directors of the 1993 Legislative Assembly, among them Zamora, for having supposedly ratified that year an amnesty law that It suspended the crimes committed by those who participated in the civil war.
Given the first arrest warrant, Zamora stated that Salvadoran law does not allow a deputy to be prosecuted for the decisions he makes in the legislative exercise. “For me it is very clear that it is a situation where what they wanted was to silence me,” stated the politician in reference to the arrest warrant.
According to Marcela Zamora, a documentary filmmaker and one of the politician’s daughters, this is “political persecution” by the Bukele Government, which despite having been investigating her father for more than three years, “has not “They have been able to find nothing for him,” since “during more than 40 years of political and diplomatic career he used the power granted to him as a public deputy to put it at the service” of the Salvadorans.
“Cowardly they want to imprison him for a crime that does not exist,” the daughter stressed in a statement in December.
Judge Portillo is accused of “opacity†for the complaint of the process.
In 1993, shortly before a United Nations Truth Commission revealed its report on human rights violations during the civil war (1980-1992), the Legislative Assembly enacted the amnesty, which was declared unconstitutional in 2016 by the Supreme Court. of Justice.
Zamora was vice president of the Legislative Assembly and candidate for the country’s Presidency for the Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 1994, and has been El Salvador’s ambassador to the United States and India.
He is currently part of the Citizen Resistance movement, which has described Bukele’s re-election on February 4 as unconstitutional, in elections in which he obtained a resounding victory.