Federal Jury Finds Salvadoran Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity in 80's

By JULIA PRESTON

Published: November 19, 2005

In a verdict that brought back a dark time in the United States' forgotten wars in Central America, a federal jury in Memphis yesterday found a former military colonel from El Salvador responsible for crimes against humanity during that country's civil war in the 1980's and ordered him to pay $6 million in damages.

The nine-member jury found that the colonel, Nicolás Carranza, had "command responsibility" for the torture of a Salvadoran who was forced to confess falsely to the 1983 killing of an American military adviser, Lt. Cmdr. Albert Schaufelberger.