Murders Most Foul

As representatives of the Sandinistas and the contras verbally assaulted each other in San Jose last week, the Costa Rican capital was also the site of a landmark case being tried by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. On trial is the government of Honduras, which has been charged with "integral responsibility" in the disappearance and presumed murder of an unspecified number of its citizens by army death squads. Though the evidence presented at the proceedings deals specifically with the disappearance of four people in the early 1980s, no individuals are on trial; rather, the court is attempting to determine if there is a pattern of murderous conduct on the part of Honduras. For many Latin Americans, the missing four may come to symbolize the thousands who have mysteriously and tragically vanished throughout the hemisphere over the years.

As the judicial arm of the Organization of American States, the court has until now given only advisory opinions. While the trial deals solely with Honduras, the ruling is expected to be cited as a precedent in future cases and may serve as a model of international law. Compared with the record of abuses in such countries as El Salvador and Paraguay, the number of disappearances in Honduras is relatively small. But the histories of the four who vanished there satisfied the OAS's requirements for hearing such cases, including that the petitioners must have exhausted all other avenues of recourse. Moreover, Honduras is one of the few countries that accept the court's jurisdiction. Last week Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo pledged to accept whatever verdict the court reaches.

The case is a lawyer's nightmare. Since the bodies of death-squad victims are seldom found, little prima facie evidence exists. The court has thus had to rely on the testimony of those who have brushed up against the death squads. Their willingness to cooperate has already produced tragic results. A human-rights official and a former Honduran army sergeant have been killed in the past three weeks. Many Hondurans believe they were silenced by death squads.

The court's seven magistrates are not expected to reach a verdict until June. If they find Honduras guilty, they can issue a condemnation and order the government to pay reparations. "This case has the potential to depoliticize human rights," says Claudio Grossman, one of the lawyers involved in the prosecution. "Instead of making human rights a point of ideological discourse, it can be adjudicated."