UW CHR sues CIA for records from the Salvadoran civil war

The University of Washington Center for Human Rights is taking the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to federal court over what they claim is its stonewalling of information requests related to the 1981 Santa Cruz massacre. They have been requesting information about Lt. Col. Sigifredo Ochoa Perez for quite some time now. From Al Jazeera America

Government troops under Lt. Col. Sigifredo Ochoa Perez’s command allegedly killed dozens of civilians on as they fled government ground and air attacks in El Salvador’s Santa Cruz region in November 1981, during a major operation against rebels amid the country’s 12-year civil war that left at least 75,000 dead.

Ochoa Perez was trained in Washington, D.C., at the Inter-American Defense College, an international academy that boasts many graduates — including current Chilean President Michelle Bachelet — who went on to take high-ranking positions in their respective nations. Ochoa Perez led the Atlacatl Battalion, which was trained by the U.S. and was involved in the massacre in Santa Cruz, according to Salvadoran investigative website El Faro.

UW CHR said it filed the lawsuit on Oct. 2 after the CIA rejected the center’s 2013 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, citing national security exemptions. The center argued that the CIA had failed to meet its legal obligations under FOIA rules.

“We believe that the CIA is unlawfully withholding documents regarding a commander of the military operation that resulted in the Santa Cruz massacre,” UW CHR Director Angelina Snodgrass Godoy said this week in a news release.

I believe that the US should release more documents related to El Salvador's civil war in order to help Salvadorans and Americans better understand what happened (El Salvador's brutal civil war: What we still don't know). Selective releases aren't going to be entirely helpful, however, as reports from State, Defense, and other agencies are likely to tell different, sometimes contradictory, versions of events.

There are also documents in El Salvador that need to be released. That's something that the FMLN and Salvadoran Sanchez Ceren have not pushed to the extent they could. Clarifying past events is not something that ARENA nor the FMLN has been terribly interested in pursuing.