-5993.
In addition, at times, the Chalatenango Trial Court requested very specific
information and, when this was not forthcoming, it did not ask for more general
information. For example, it requested information from the Joint General Staff of
the Armed Forces regarding “the identity of the officer in charge of the military
operation in the Los Alvarenga canton[, and also] the list of the members of the
Atlacatl Battalion who took part in the operation [carried out] on […] June 22, 1982”
(supra para. 48(51)). When the Joint Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces responded
that the files did not include the name of the officer in charge of this military
operation “or the list of those who took part in it” and that “on June 22, 1982, the
ATLACATL Battalion was conducting a military operation in Morazán Department,”
the court did not ask for any general information about this battalion and the soldiers
who were members of it, or about other military operations conducted at the end of
May and in June 1982 in the Chalatenango area.
94.
In relation to this way of proceeding, in his special report of September 2,
2004, on the “forced disappearance of the children, Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano
Cruz, its current impunity and the pattern of violence surrounding such
disappearances” (supra para. 48(5)), the Ombudsman’s Office stated that:
This Office considers that it was extremely probable that [the Joint] Chief of Staff [of the
Armed Forces …] may have denied information that the military institution would have
been able to provide, in order to contribute to the impunity of those responsible or [..]
that he made his statement before the judicial authority without conducting even the
minimum pertinent investigation. This is clear because a simple journalistic investigation
at the time […] shows that the military operation and the participation of the Belloso and
Atlacatl Battalions were public events, widely covered by the press, and that the
Commander of the Atlacatl Battalion […] gave details of the operation publicly, and was
identified as the person in charge of the military operation.
95.
Regarding the procedural actions concerning the Armed Forces, the Court
observes that the judicial authorities did not assume a diligent attitude that took
advantage of the information in the different files and logbooks of the Armed Forces,
which could have been very useful to clarify the facts under investigation. It would
have been possible to find the information needed to identify the soldiers who took
part in operations in the area of the reported facts in 1982 in these files and
logbooks, and also to find information on the places where children were found at
the time of the reported facts. In this regard, the witness, Jorge Alberto Orellana
Osorio (supra para. 36), who is a retired Army officer, explained in the public hearing
before the Court that, during the armed conflict, the Army kept a written record of
its military operations, in which it noted the mission to be carried out, the respective
unit or battalion, the sector in which it would be carried out, and the date on which it
would commence, together with the procedures to be followed. The witness stated
that, once a military operation had concluded, the unit or battalion made out a report
for the superior unit, in which it noted the number of civilians who had been
evacuated, “men, women and children.” The names were not included, merely the
fact that a civilian population or a determined number of persons had been found
and that it had been decided to evacuate them.
96.
In this regard, the criminal proceedings file contains information that,
although the prosecutor requested that inspections of the logbooks of the Air Force
and the files of the Joint General Staff of the Armed Forces should be ordered, the
judge did not order these measures to be taken, and no reason was given for this
(supra para. 48(53), 48(54) and 48(55) and 48(68)). Also, owing to a lack of
diligence, only the logbook of the Third Fusiliers Company was inspected and the
judicial inspection of the remaining logbooks of No. 1 Military Detachment of