AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to move to another international issue intimately connected to the United States. Jury selection begins today in Florida for the trial of two former top Salvadoran officers who are accused of directing the rape and murder of four American church women, murders which took place December 2nd, 1980, in El Salvador. The suit has been brought by the families of the four women under the Torture Victim Protection Act, which is a federal statute designed to give the victims of the worst crimes, or their surviving kin, the chance to confront both the crimes’ direct perpetrators, as well as the officials who had the authority and responsibility to ensure that the acts did not take place.

We’re joined now by Miriam Ford, who is the niece of one of those four church women, Ita Ford. Miriam Ford is a nurse practitioner who founded the Ita Ford Health Clinic in East Harlem, which serves undocumented immigrants.

Miriam Ford, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you tell us who the two men are on trial?

MIRIAM FORD: These men who are going on trial today are Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and José Guillermo García. Vides Casanova was the director of the National Guard, and Guillermo García was the minister of defense at the time that my aunt and Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke and Jean Donovan were murdered.

AMY GOODMAN: How did these men end up in Florida?

MIRIAM FORD: Well, that’s actually a very good question. We don’t know how they ended up in Florida. And it was not until my dad and some of the other family members were doing an interview with Bryant Gumbel and he told them that he had found out that they were in Florida that we knew they were there. And that was sometime last year. And so, once we found out that they were there, we were able to go after them.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you briefly tell us what happened to your aunt and the three other nuns in El Salvador December 2nd, 1980?

MIRIAM FORD: Ita Ford and Maura Clarke were Maryknoll sisters, and they were living and working in a part of El Salvador called Chalatenango. They were working with refugees, internally displaced people. If you remember, in 1980, there was a civil war going on that was backed by the U.S. government. And Dorothy Kazel was a Ursuline sister, and Jean Donovan was a laywoman, and they were working in a part of El Salvador called La Libertad. In December 2nd of 1980, Ita and Maura were coming back from Nicaragua from a Maryknoll retreat. Dorothy and Jean picked them up at the airport to take them home. They never made it home. They were stopped along the highway by some soldiers. They were taken to the side of the road. They were assaulted and murdered and left there.

AMY GOODMAN: Who were the men who actually did the killing?

MIRIAM FORD: They were five national guardsmen who were wearing civilian clothes. And they were led by a subsergeant whose name is Luis Colindres Alemán. And they were the ones who actually killed them.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened to them?

MIRIAM FORD: Well, they actually were on trial, and they were found guilty, and they were put in jail. And in 1998, three of the guardsmen were released from prison. And there are, I believe, two guardsmen still in prison, but they will probably be released also, under an amnesty law in El Salvador.

AMY GOODMAN: And how are you able to prove the direct culpability of these senior Salvadoran military men now being sued by your family in a West Palm Beach court?

MIRIAM FORD: Well, I think what we’re trying to do is push for the truth. This is just one further step in getting to the truth. The Truth Commission in El Salvador found out that the guardsmen and the sergeant obeyed orders from higher — obeyed higher orders. And the Truth Commission also said that the defense minister at the time, Guillermo García, made no serious effort to thoroughly investigate those guilty of the assassinations. So, the thinking is that these are men who allowed a system of torture and violence to go on under them, and so they created a climate where rape and murder was just common acts.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the culpability of the United States? This happened under the Carter administration. Then the investigations, I guess, went through the Reagan-Bush years.

MIRIAM FORD: Well, the family, 20 years later, we filed — we have been filing Freedom of Information Act materials for years and years and years. And the materials continue to come back redacted. We get small amounts of information every couple of years, but clearly the Carter administration was on its last legs. If you remember, there was a hostage crisis going on at the time in the Middle East, and the Carter administration was consumed with this hostage crisis. When Reagan and Bush came in — when Reagan came in, there was a brief stop of military aid, and the military aid just was started up again, and it was started up with a vengeance. And it’s just been a money machine going down there to pay for the uniforms, to pay for the trucks, to pay for the guns, that killed not only my aunt and her three co-workers, but at least 75,000 other Salvadoran people.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of Ita Ford and her co-workers’ deaths. What are you calling for in this trial?

MIRIAM FORD: We’re calling for the truth. We want to know what happened on December 2nd. We want to know who gave the orders. And we want to know why people, good people, who are fleeing torture from all over the world, are having such a terrible time getting into this country. Once they sneak into the country, they’re treated terribly. And here, people who have been implicated in torture and murder of thousands upon thousands of their own citizens are allowed to live freely and very well. As North Americans, we’re able to access the judicial system in a way that peasants from El Salvador are unable to. And so, this is not just about my aunt and Dorothy and Jean and Maura; this is about all of the people who were killed during the war, and finding out — getting to the truth of what happened to them.

AMY GOODMAN: Miriam, thank you very much.

MIRIAM FORD: OK. Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Miriam Ford, the niece of Ita Ford, one of the four church women killed December 2nd, 1980, murdered on a road in El Salvador by Salvadoran national guardsmen. Today, the trial begins of the head of the National Guard, the former head, as well as the former minister of defense of El Salvador, in a West Palm Beach court. You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! If you want more information on that case, by the way, you can go to the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights’ website. That’s LCHR.org. We’ll be back in a minute.