Ex-guardsman insists orders to kill churchwomen came from above

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - A former soldier convicted in the slaying of four American churchwomen 20 years ago has repeated his claim that orders to kill came from superior officers, according to an interview published Wednesday.

The claim by Daniel Canales comes as two Salvadoran ex-generals are on trial in West Palm Beach, Fla., in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the slain women's families. The lawsuit claims retired Gens. Jose Guillermo Garcia, 67, who lives near Fort Lauderdale, and Eugenio Vides Casanova, 62, who lives near Daytona Beach, allowed the slayings.

''If there had not been an order from above, we would never have been involved in something so stupid,'' Canales was quoted as telling the newspaper La Prensa Grafica.

Canales, one of five low-ranking soldiers convicted in the case, did not specify who might have given the orders. The man who gave the orders at the scene, Lt. Luis Antonio Colindres, has denied there were orders from superior officers.

Maryknoll nuns Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, both of New York, Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan, both of Cleveland, were abducted at a military checkpoint, then raped and slain by Salvadoran soldiers. The slayings occurred in December 1980 during a civil war between leftist guerrillas and the government, which targeted religious workers because of their advocacy of the poor, an activity considered subversive.

Vides Casanova was chief of the National Guard, to which Canales and Colindres belonged. Garcia was minister of defense.

Canales and four other former guardsmen were convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Three of the men - including Canales and Colindres - were ordered freed in 1998.

Canales was quoted as saying that Vides Casanova had argued for killing the five suspects so they would not implicate him in the killings, but was deterred by opposition from Gen. Napoleon Montes Bonilla, who has since died.

Canales insisted that he was innocent of the slayings and had tried to persuade the others not to kill the women.

In another recent interview, Colindres was quoted as saying that the women were killed because his unit had heard that they had helped leftist guerrillas kill a national guardsman in 1979.

He said the generals on trial in Florida ''are completely innocent. We killed them (the women), but they did not order it.''