Suspect in murders of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador accused of immigration fraud

By David Abel and Mark Arsenault, Globe Staff

Federal officials charged today that the former Salvadoran government minister accused of colluding in the infamous killing of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador 20 years ago engaged in immigration fraud while living in Massachusetts.

Inocente Orlando Montano who has lived in Massachusetts for years under his own name -- most recently in Everett -- is among 20 former military officers charged in fresh indictments from Spain with conspiring to kill the priests, the Globe reported this month.

The international indictments issued in May seek justice for the clergymen, five of them Spaniards; their housekeeper; and her 16-year-old daughter, who were roused at night from their beds on the campus of Central American University in San Salvador and executed by an elite unit of the Salvadoran military.

Most of those accused of the notorious war crime have never faced justice.

Montano was not taken into custody today by federal officials for the Spanish indictments. Instead, he was arrested and appeared in US District Court in Boston on charges of lying on immigration documents he filed with the federal government for the past seven years.

According to a complaint unsealed this afternoon, Montano wrote in federal documents that he never served in the El Salvadoran military when he applied for special protection under federal immigration laws.

In fact, according to the complaint, Montano served in the Salvadoran military from 1963 until 1994 when he retired with the rank of colonel. Immigration agents searched Montano’s Everett apartment two days after the Globe’s story and discovered a 1983 Salvadoran military identification card in his name showing he had the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Prosecutors said they are seeking to detain Montano unless he agrees to electronic monitoring, a requirement his attorney said he is wiling to live with. Montano’s initial appearance in court is expected to resume later this afternoon.

Montano has to be interviewed by federal probation officials. As he left the courtroom today, he ignored a Globe reporter who asked for a comment in Spanish. Montano needed a cane to assist him as he walked.

In 1993, a United Nations “truth commission’’ that investigated the clergy killings named Montano, a former government vice minister of public safety, as one of the top leaders who participated in a meeting to plot the assassination of Father Ignacio Ellacuria, the university’s rector. The government suspected Ellacuria of supporting leftist rebels. The unit dispatched to kill Ellacuria was ordered to leave no witnesses, according to the commission’s report.

The Jesuit massacre on Nov. 16, 1989, made international headlines. Photos of slain priests were shocking even for El Salvador, which at the time was deep into a 12-year civil war riddled with atrocities. About 75,000 people died in the conflict between government forces and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a collection of rebel groups.

In a June phone interview with a Salvadoran Internet newspaper, Montano said that the indictment “is all based on lies’’ and that the only high-level meetings in which he participated concerned the defense of San Salvador, which was under rebel attack at the time. He told the news site El Faro that he was in Massachusetts and had been living in the same place for the past 10 years.

Montano was located in Everett by The Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights organization based in San Francisco. In 2008, the center filed suit against the 20 defendants in Spain, which led to the new indictments.

Nine of the men accused in the indictments turned themselves in to authorities in El Salvador on Aug. 7. Salvadoran courts will decide if they will be extradited.

The Globe reported earlier this month that the National Court of Spain levied the indictments in the case under the principle of “universal jurisdiction,’’ which says crimes against humanity are so heinous they can be prosecuted across international lines.

Spanish courts are known for applying the principle in far-reaching international indictments. Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, was arrested in 1998 on human rights charges in London, for example, on a warrant issued by a Spanish court. He was not extradited.

Nine members of the Salvadoran military were originally charged in El Salvador in the Jesuit killings. In a 1991 prosecution widely criticized as a sham, only two went to jail, including Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides, who was charged with giving the order to shoot the priests.

The UN truth commission later found “substantial evidence’’ that high-level government officials, including Montano, colluded the day before the killings to order Benavides to kill Father Ellacuria and any witnesses.

Benavides was freed under a 1993 amnesty law, approved after the peace accord that ended the country’s civil war.