The Truth Hurts

LONG BEFORE THE 12-YEAR CIVIL WAR ENDED IN 1992, Salvadorans knew who had fired the bullets that left 75,000 dead. About 2,000 people gave testimony -- often anonymously -- to the U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission set up last year to investigate the war's mass executions and other atrocities. With its 800-page final report, the commission confirmed that 85% of the war crimes were committed by government-directed anticommunist forces, including the Salvadoran army and free-lance death squads, backed in some cases by wealthy, conservative citizens. The report accuses General Rene Emilio Ponce, the current Defense Minister, of plotting the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests and two others. Leftist F.M.L.N. rebels, the commission concluded, also carried out assassinations and kidnappings, but more selectively. The commission recommended that 40 military officers be suspended immediately and that five F.M.L.N. leaders be barred from public office for 10 years. Eager to promote reconciliation, however, the National Assembly at week's end voted a general amnesty for the accused on both sides of the conflict.