Former President Alfredo Cristiani used a group of soldiers to carry out the raid that killed six Jesuit priests. | Photo: EFE​

San Salvador, June 8 (RHC)-- The Attorney General's Office (FGR) of El Salvador has accused former President Alfredo Cristiani of coordinating and authorizing the massacre of members of the Society of Jesus at the Central American University.

The judicial body concluded that it has sufficient evidence that the crime perpetrated by death squads on November 16, 1989, in which six Jesuit priests died, five of them Spanish, along with two women, was the work of the former Salvadoran president.

The politician, who belongs to the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, used a group of soldiers to carry out the raid and according to a witness, Emilio Ponce, now deceased, was present at the place where the crime was decided, agreed and authorized it.

In addition to Cristiani, eight people have been charged in the case, including Rodolfo Parker, a fugitive former deputy who was incriminated in the past by an eyewitness for offering one million colones to avoid mentioning the participation of Cristiani and high-ranking military officials in the massacre of the clergymen.

According to the Attorney General's Office, Parker was then the legal director of the Salvadoran Defense Ministry and asked Lieutenant José Ricardo Espinoza Guerra that when he testified he could not reveal that he was carrying out orders from the high command of the army and the former president.

Cristiani, also a fugitive with an arrest warrant, is at the center of the anti-corruption campaign of President Nayib Bukele, who began his campaign on June 1 by ordering the seizure of all his properties in the country, valued at more than $10 million.

Sources close to the Public Prosecutor's Office emphasize that the right-wing politician arrived "broke to the government and left a millionaire", in reference to the fortune he built evidently through embezzlement, theft and embezzlement of state funds.