Just before dawn 30 years ago, on 16 November 1989, US-trained Salvadoran soldiers entered the campus of the Central American University in San Salvador and surrounded the modest lodgings of the Jesuit priests who taught there.

Just before dawn 30 years ago, on 16 November 1989, US-trained Salvadoran soldiers entered the campus of the Central American University in San Salvador and surrounded the modest lodgings of the Jesuit priests who taught there. They ordered five priests into the pretty rose garden and forced them to lie face down on the ground. They shot them in the back of the head, and then shot a sixth priest in his bedroom. The assassins were under orders to leave no witnesses. When they found the Jesuits’ housekeeper and her teenage daughter cowering in the guest room, they shot them dead.

It was one of the most notorious crimes committed during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. The attack was orchestrated by senior military commanders who targeted university rector Ignacio Ellacuría SJ, said to be close to brokering a peace deal between the guerrilla insurgency and the military government.

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