In this Jan. 11, 2019 photo, the name of Dutch journalist Jan Cornelius Kuiper is engraved as part of a memorial of the victims of the El Salvador Civil War between 1980 and 1992.It was 1982, the height of the civil war in El Salvador. Four Dutch TV journalists had linked up with leftist rebels near the town of El Paraiso, which has an army base on its outskirts.
Calls are now mounting in the Netherlands for Reyes Mena and others responsible for the killings to be brought to justice after a documentary shown on Dutch TV cast a spotlight on the never-prosecuted slayings. The investigative piece, aptly titled “In Cold Blood,” revealed that Reyes Mena had been living for years in relative obscurity in the United States.
The developments come amid a growing push for justice on behalf of victims of El Salvador’s civil war, during which an estimated 75,000 civilians were killed, mostly by U.S.-backed government security forces. In its report, the UN truth commission cited statements from officers at a military base outside El Paraiso in naming Reyes Mena as the planner of the ambush on the Dutch journalists.
Days before their deaths, journalists Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemsen had come under the scrutiny of El Salvador’s secret police after Koster’s contact information was found on a guerrilla. Before dawn on March 11, 1982, the four were rousted in their San Salvador hotel and taken to secret police headquarters for interrogation by Moran.