The perpetrators of the murder of four Dutch Ikon journalists in El Salvador in 1982 received a prison sentence of thirty years. At the beginning of June they had already been guilty and initially seemed to get a criminal of fifteen years. But the final written judgment shows that those penalties are higher.
The judge imposed the three former soldiers aged 85, 91 and 93 each fifteen years per victim. In total, that would amount to sixty years in prison per perestower, but when the murders were committed in the 1980s, the maximum sentence was thirty years.
“I am silent,” says Saskia ter Laag the sister of soundman Hans ter Laag, one of the Ikon journalists emotional on Friday evening NRC. “It’s just very unreal, it actually makes me sad.” The high prison sentences make her realize even more “how serious” the crime actually was.
Civil war
The four journalists, Koop Koster, Joop Willemsen, Jan Kuiper and Hans ter Laag traveled in 1982 on behalf of the former Omroep Ikon to El Salvador to report on the then civil war. On March 17, they were ambushed by the government army and were shot. For years, an amnesty law made it impossible to prosecute the perpetrators of the murders, which had already been identified by a UN truth committee in the 1990s. In 2016, that law was withdrawn and the relatives were able to report a year later.
After 43 years there is now a definitive written judgment. “I notice that a burden of my shoulders has fallen off,” says Saskia ter Laag, who also wrote a book about the murders. Despite a certain relief, this judgment for Ter Laag does not necessarily mean a closure. “What is closing? People often underestimate that. History has still happened. It remains what it is, but now there is justice,” she says.
The perpetrators can still appeal on the sentence until Tuesday, not about the question of guilt. The relatives can also start a civil procedure. Ter Laag itself, however, does not need that: “Then you are a few years later I fear.”
Hope for personal apologies
Part of the punishment is also that the Salvadoran state openly apologizes to the relatives. Ter Laag hopes that El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele will come to the Netherlands to personally apologize, although she knows that this is unlikely. “I would be sorry if he would outsource it,” she said. A video message would also feel like ‘little effort’ for her, she says.
The apologies are not very much for the president, but from perpetrators. For her, those apologies from “the gentlemen” would be even more important than the imprisonment imposed. “Somewhere you hope that people will repent, if someone sincerely offers his apologies and really believes, I think that has much more effect for both parties.”
Read also
The death of Vier Ikon journalists keeps El Salvador busy almost 45 years later