CENTREVILLE, Va. — A lawsuit has been initiated by the brother of a Dutch journalist who was killed in 1982 while covering the civil war in El Salvador against a former Salvadoran military officer residing in northern Virginia. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, aims for unspecified monetary compensation and asserts that Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena is accountable for the murders of Jan Kuiper and three fellow Dutch journalists.
Reyes Mena, now aged 85, held the rank of colonel and was in command of El Salvador’s Fourth Infantry Brigade. This brigade, under his leadership, was identified as responsible for the journalists’ deaths by a United Nations Truth Commission established in 1992, following the peace agreement that concluded the civil war in El Salvador. The conflict resulted in the deaths of around 75,000 civilians, primarily at the hands of U.S.-supported governmental security forces.
According to the legal complaint, the killings of the Dutch journalists were marked by the U.N. Truth Commission as some of the most notorious crimes during the civil unrest, showcasing the violence employed by Salvadoran security forces against independent media both domestically and internationally. Kuiper, along with Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag, and Joop Willemsen, encountered an ambush while attempting to access areas held by leftist guerrillas opposing the Salvadoran security forces. The Truth Commission reports indicate the ambush was executed near the El Paraíso military base under Reyes Mena’s command.
For many years, Kuiper’s family, along with advocates for justice regarding the journalists’ murders, has faced obstacles in their pursuit. Following the release of the Truth Commission’s findings, the Salvadoran government enacted an amnesty law that effectively protected Reyes Mena and other military leaders from criminal charges. However, this amnesty was declared unconstitutional by El Salvador’s Supreme Court in 2016, leading to a judge’s issuance of arrest warrants for Reyes Mena and several others, including former defense minister Gen. José Guillermo García and Col. Francisco Antonio Morán, related to the killings of the journalists.
The lawsuit reveals that Reyes Mena ceased visiting El Salvador once arrest warrants were announced. It states that there is currently no indication he will be extradited, despite an Interpol notice calling for his arrest. Inquiries directed to the Salvadoran Embassy regarding extradition attempts were referred to the nation’s judiciary, which indicated that a formal public information request must be made. The U.S. State Department also did not provide comments related to Reyes Mena’s extradition standing as of Friday.
At Reyes Mena’s residence in Centreville, a woman identified as his wife refrained from giving any comments and stated she would communicate a reporter’s request for remarks to their legal representative, whose identity she did not disclose.
The Center for Justice and Accountability, a nonprofit legal organization that represents Gert Kuiper in the lawsuit, has pursued numerous cases against individuals implicated in overseas war crimes under U.S. statutes, such as the Torture Victim Protection Act. In a notable instance from 2019, a jury in Alexandria found a Virginia man, who had served as a colonel in the Somali Army under dictator Siad Barre, liable for the torture of a Somali man during the 1980s, resulting in a damages award of $500,000. The organization also secured a $21 million default judgment against Mohamed Ali Samantar, a former Somali defense minister and prime minister.
Efforts to hold foreign officials accountable have met with varied success. Earlier this year, a judge dismissed multiple civil suits against Khalifa Hifter, a Libyan military leader residing in Virginia, accused of murdering civilians amid the Libyan civil war. Notably, the lawsuits against Hifter were not filed by the Center for Justice and Accountability.
