Slow Justice

New facts on a triple murder

Preparing for a convention of electrical engineers, workers at San Salvador's Sheraton Hotel last week covered up some grisly mementos: bullet holes in a wall of the dining room, where a Salvadoran labor leader and two Americans working for agricultural reform were murdered one night 21 months ago. Even as paint and plaster were being applied, there were complaints of another cover-up in what has come to be known as the "agreform murders." On grounds of insufficient evidence, Salvadoran Judge Hector Enrique Jimenez Zaldivar on Oct. 1 released an army officer accused of ordering the murders. Said a U.S. embassy statement: "We are dismayed and incredulous."

The ruling made it unlikely that the masterminds of the murders would quickly, if ever, be punished. For that reason, the AFL-CIO last week in Washington revealed details of the killings and their aftermath that had not yet been made public. Two of the victims, Michael Peter Hammer, 42, an agrarian reform specialist, and Lawyer Mark David Pearlman, 36, were in El Salvador on assignment for the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the AFL-CIO's Latin-American arm. The third victim, Jose Rodolfo Viera, 43, was both head of the farmworkers' union and president of the Salvadoran institute for Agrarian Transformation. The institute was empowered under 1980 laws to take land from the country's propertied oligarchy and redistribute it among Salvadoran peasants, a program fiercely resented by the ruling families.

According to the investigation jointly conducted by the AFL-CIO and the Salvadoran government, the killers were Jose Dimas Valle Acevedo, 35, and Santiago Gomez Gonzalez, 32, ex-corporals in El Salvador's national guard. They were apprehended, underwent lie-detector tests, confessed and were formally arrested. Both were at the Sheraton Hotel on the night of Jan. 3, 1981, serving as plain-clothes bodyguards for police officers visiting the hotel. One of those officers was Lieut. Rodolfo Isidro Lopez Sibrian, 26, known as "Posorito," or "Little Match," for his naming red hair, fiery temper and anti-Communist views.

The two enlisted men said in their confessions that Lopez Sibrian told them: "Look, inside the hotel is Viera and two other fair-skinned men. You are going to kill them." Soon after, Lopez Sibrian handed Gomez Gonzalez a 9-mm Ingram submachine gun. Meanwhile another officer, Captain Eduardo Avila, slapped a .45-cal. submachine gun, equipped with a silencer, in Valle Acevedo's hands.

The killers walked up to the three men and opened fire. Then the two gunmen darted out of the dining room and left the hotel. In a country where at least 30,000 unsolved murders have taken place in the past three years, no one moved to stop them.

Lopez Sibrian, who denied being at the Sheraton that night, was put in a lineup to be viewed by witnesses of the incident. However, before appearing, he was allowed to dye his red hair black, cut it and shave off his mustache. Although nobody recognized him in the lineup, he was later identified by the killers. Lopez Sibrian was also ordered to undergo a lie-detector test, and failed it.

Although Lopez Sibrian is now in military custody, U.S. officials are frustrated at the reluctance of the Salvadoran judiciary to pursue the case. American officials are also upset at the public support that Avila and Lopez Sibrian have received from Roberto d'Aubuisson, the right-wing former army officer who became president of El Salvador's constituent assembly this year. D'Aubuisson called the accused officers "my colleagues and my friends. I am honored to be their friend. I know they are good soldiers."

Meanwhile, the Reagan Administration must file another report with Congress in January certifying that El Salvador is making progress on human rights. At that time, AFL-CIO officials will determine whether they approve of the pace at which the investigation of the killings is being conducted. If not, they will most likely lobby against the certification. In any event, officials at the U.S. embassy in San Salvador make it clear that they do not consider the matter closed. Says U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton: "The hand has not been played out, not quite."

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