Rufina Amaya Márquez, who has played a key role in reconstructing the events. 2 When night fell, the soldiers took the children to a building next to the hamlet's church, known as "the convent," and executed them there. The petitioners assert that the children numbered more than one hundred. 11. After the killings, the petition states, the soldiers proceeded to set fire to the bodies and to the hamlet's houses. The petitioners say that the Legal Aid Office of the Office of the Archbishop has succeeded to date in identifying 364 persons murdered in this hamlet. 12. Also on December 11, 1981, according to the petitioners, the people of La Joya were subjected to a military operation similar to the one carried out in El Mozote. At about 8 a.m. soldiers came into the canton and murdered everyone in it. According to the petitioners, the Legal Aid Office of the Office of the Archbishop has succeeded to date in identifying 139 people murdered in this hamlet. 13. The petitioners indicate that on the morning of December 12, after taking part in the events at El Mozote, the Third Company of the Atlacatl Battalion proceeded northeast to the hamlets of Ranchería and Los Toriles. That same morning, having murdered everyone in Ranchería, they moved on to Los Toriles. There they repeated the operation and then headed to Guacamaya. The petitioners say that the remains of 54 persons executed in Ranchería and 62 persons executed in Los Toriles have so far been identified. 14. According to the petition, around 7 a.m. on December 12, 1981, another detachment of the Atlacatl Battalion reached the hamlet of Jocote Amarillo, where they shot to death everyone found there. The petitioners say that 17 victims executed there have so far been identified. 15. That same day, according to the petitioners, in the canton of Cerro Pando, some one hundred peasants were massacred by the military. When the troops arrived in Cerro Pando, many of its inhabitants had concealed themselves in the neighboring mountains, from which locations they heard the massacre. According to the Legal Aid Office of the Office of the Archbishop, 114 persons executed at Cerro Pando have so far been identified. In addition, the petitioners indicate that at least 15 people hiding in the fields were discovered and massacred by the military at a place known as "Cerro Ortiz" in the locality of Joateca, department of Morazán. 16. The petitioners allege that the authorities, despite being aware of the events, refused to launch an investigation. The massacres, they indicate, were public knowledge not only in El Salvador but internationally. Evidence of this, they say, are the reports published simultaneously in The New York Times and The Washington Post days after the events. 3 According to the petitioners, because of the risk involved in filing a complaint and the general ineffectiveness of the judiciary during the conflict, the complaint was formally filed only in October 1990. The investigation fell to the Second Judge of the lower courts of San Francisco Gotera. According to the petitioners, the investigation was marked from the outset by "a series of grave irregularities and flaws." Thus, it was pointed out, the judge showed himself reluctant to hear witnesses, thereby limiting without any legal basis the hearing of testimony in order to delay it. 17. Similarly, the petitioners claim, the judge refused without justification to carry out the inspections and exhumations required by law. Unjustifiably, they assert, inspections began 19 months after the criminal proceedings opened. Work to exhume the bodies was only partially done because the investigation was actually suspended by the judge in February 1993. The 2 The petitioners pointed out that Mrs. Rufina Amaya was forced to come out with the second-to-last group of women and took advantage of a distraction by her captors to hide behind an apple tree. She remained there in hiding, witnessing the murder of the women and children. In her account she asserts that she recognized the voice of her four children asking for help before being murdered. 3 See "Alma Guillermoprieto, Salvadoran peasants Describe Mass Killing", The Washington Post, January 27, 1982, cover page and page A-16; and Raymond Bonner, "Massacre of Hundreds Reported in Salvadoran Village," The New York Times, January 27, 1982, cover page. 3