23 were based on a report that by the US Embassy in San Salvador prepared without visiting the scene of 117 the events. C. The criminal investigation 117. Between 1981 and 1990 there was no judicial investigation into the massacres at El 118 Mozote and nearby locales. 118. As noted earlier, most of the survivors of the massacre took refuge in Honduras for several years. Because of this, it was only in the early 1990s, when many had returned to El Salvador, 119 that they took the initiative to submit testimony and file complaints . Several witnesses said that they 120 had abstained for a long time from complaining because they were afraid. 119. The first complaint was presented on October 26, 1990 by Pedro Chicas Romero, a native of La Joya, before the Second Court of First Instance of San Francisco Gotera (hereinafter “the Second Court”). On the basis of information available at the time, Pedro Chicas Romero declared the following: On December 10, 1981, in the afternoon, a large number of soldiers from the Atlacatl Battalion entered the village of El Mozote (...), where they questioned the inhabitants and stripped them of their personal belongings. The following day, December 11, 1981, in the early morning, soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion began to drag village residents out of their houses. In this process they formed groups, separating the men from the women; the man were led into the church of El Mozote, while the women were taken to the home of Alfredo Marquez, 36 years old. The children of the village were divided, the younger ones going with the women and the older ones with the men. Later in that same morning, the soldiers proceeded to kill the men and the children with them in the church, throwing their bodies into the convent located next to the church. Around noon, after having killed all the men, the soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion began to take the women out of the house of Alfredo Marquez and proceeded to kill them in different houses of the village, while the children who were with them were left locked up in the house of Mr. Marquez. On the same day, December 11, 1981, at around 11 p.m., after having killed the women, the soldiers proceeded to murder the children who were still in the home of Mr. Marquez. Such was the magnitude of this massacre that the only survivor was Mrs. Rufina Amaya, then 39 years of age, who managed to hide from the soldiers and witness the events from her hiding place. Moreover, those soldiers, who identified themselves at the outset of the interrogation as belonging to the Atlacatl Battalion, burned the houses in the place where the massacre had been committed. Those same soldiers took the girls into the hills of El Chingo and La Cruz near the village of El Mozote, where they raped and then killed them. On that same day, December 11, 1981, a similar massacre took place in the canton of La Joya (...), where soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion slaughtered men, women, children and elderly people of the place. On December 12, 1981, soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion went to the villages of Ranchería and Los Toriles, in Guacamaya canton (...), where they killed residents including children, women, men and elderly people and also destroyed and burned dwellings and killed any domestic animals they found. There were some survivors from the massacre in the village of Jocote Amarillo, including one Juan Bautista Marquez, then 41 years of age, who saw the soldiers 117 Ibid., and IDHUCA report, Consideraciones sobre la impunidad a propósito de la masacre del El Mozote (“Considerations on Impunity with Respect to the El Mozote Massacre”), No. 451 of November 7, 1990 (quoting “Weakness and deceit, 1984 Raymond Bonner, p. 340”). The Americas Watch Report says that, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, there were at least 1,000 people in El Mozote at the time. 118 Note from the Secretary of the Second Court of First Instance of San Francisco Gotera. Court record (Annex 2 to the petitioners’ submission of July 7, 2006). 119 120 Tutela Legal, op. cit. Supplementary testimony by Pedro Chicas Romero before the Second Court of First Instance of San Francisco Gotera. 31 October 1990. Court record. (Annex 2 to the petitioners’ communication of 7 July 2006); and statement of Eustaquio Martinez Vigil before the Second Court of First Instance of San Francisco Gotera, March 20, 1991, Court record (Annex 2 to the petitioners’ communication of July 7, 2006)