Death Squads
From 1978 to 1992, before and during the civil war, he commanded what are widely considered to be death squads. Among his victims was San Salvador Archbishop Óscar Romero, a prominent Catholic clergyman and campaigner for human rights. On 7 May 1980, six weeks after Romero's assassination, D'Aubuisson and a group of civilians and soldiers were arrested on a farm; the raiders found weapons and documents identifying D'Aubuisson and the civilians as death squad organizers and financiers, and of planning a coup d'état to depose the Revolutionary Government Junta (1979–1982) (JRG) governing El Salvador. Their arrest provoked right-wing terrorist threats and institutional pressures, leading to D'Aubuisson's return from Guatemalan exile. Thereafter, on right-wing television, he regularly denounced the JRG and specific enemies; these enemies in turn were often assassinated soon after the broadcasts.
His opposition to the JRG gave him international infamy; in August 1981, The Washington Post reported that D'Aubuisson "openly talked of the need to kill 200,000 to 300,000 people to restore peace to El Salvador". Shortly afterwards, on 30 September, he founded ARENA (National Republican Alliance), a right-wing political party. D'Aubuisson accumulated much political capital via his anti-leftist and counter-insurgency fighter reputation, often using this capital to claim that the JRG was a Marxist threat to El Salvador.
Read more about this topic: Roberto D'Aubuisson
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