Editing Óscar Romero (section)

=== Investigations into the assassination ===
No one has ever been prosecuted for the assassination or confessed to it to police. Immediately following the assassination, [[José Napoleón Duarte]], the newly appointed [[Minister of Foreign Affairs (El Salvador)|foreign minister of El Salvador]], actively promulgated a "blame on both sides" propaganda trope in order to provide cover for the lack of official inquiry into the assassination plot.<ref>''New York Times'', "5,000 in San Salvador Take Part in a March for Murdered Prelate", 27 March 1980.</ref>

Subsequent investigations by the United Nations and other international bodies have established that the four assassins were members of a death squad led by D'Aubuisson.<ref name=scarend /> Revelations of the D'Aubuisson plot came to light in 1984 when US ambassador [[Robert White (ambassador)|Robert White]] testified before the [[United States Congress]] that "there was sufficient evidence" to convict D'Aubuisson of planning and ordering Romero's assassination.<ref>{{cite news| last = Nordland| first = Rod| title = How 2 rose to vie for El Salvador's presidency| newspaper = Philadelphia Inquirer| location = Philadelphia, PA| date = 23 March 1984| page = A1}}</ref> In 1993, an official [[United Nations]] report identified D'Aubuisson as the man who ordered the killing.<ref name="Morozzo">Morozzo p. 351–352, 354, 364</ref> D'Aubuisson had strong connections to the [[Nicaraguan National Guard]] and to its offshoot the [[Fifteenth of September Legion]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Webb|first=Gary|year=1999 |pages=48|title=Dark Alliance|publisher=[[Seven Stories Press]]|isbn=978-1-888363-93-7|title-link=Dark Alliance (book)}}</ref> and had also planned to overthrow the government in a coup. Later, he founded the political party [[Nationalist Republican Alliance]] (ARENA) and organized death squads that systematically carried out politically motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador. Álvaro Rafael Saravia, a former captain in the [[Salvadoran Air Force]], was chief of security for D'Aubuisson and an active member of these death squads. In 2003 a United States human rights organization, the [[Center for Justice and Accountability]], filed a civil action against Saravia. In 2004, he was found liable by a [[US District Court]] under the [[Alien Tort Claims Act]] (ATCA) (28 U.S.C. §&nbsp;1350) for aiding, conspiring, and participating in the assassination of Romero. Saravia was ordered to pay $10 million for [[extrajudicial killing]] and [[crimes against humanity]] pursuant to the ATCA;<ref>''Doe v. Rafael Saravia'', 348 F. Supp. 2d 1112 (E.D. Cal. 2004). The documentation from the case provides an account of the events leading up, and subsequent, to Romero's death.</ref> he has since gone into hiding.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://cja.org/what-we-do/litigation/doe-v-saravia/|title=Doe v. Saravia (Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero) – CJA}}</ref> On 24 March 2010–the thirtieth anniversary of Romero's death–Salvadoran President [[Mauricio Funes]] offered an official state apology for Romero's assassination. Speaking before Romero's family, representatives of the Catholic Church, diplomats, and government officials, Funes said those involved in the assassination "unfortunately acted with the protection, collaboration, or participation of state agents."<ref>{{cite news| url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8586560.stm| title= Official El Salvador apology for Oscar Romero's murder| date = 25 March 2010| work= [[BBC News]]| access-date= 25 March 2010| quote = The archbishop, he said, was a victim of right-wing death squads "who unfortunately acted with the protection, collaboration or participation of state agents."}}</ref>

A 2000 article by Tom Gibb, then a correspondent with ''The Guardian'' and later with the [[BBC]], attributes the murder to a detective of the Salvadoran National Police named Óscar Pérez Linares, acting on the orders of D'Aubuisson. The article cites an anonymous former death squad member who claimed he had been assigned to guard a house in San Salvador used by a unit of three counter-guerrilla operatives directed by D'Aubuisson. The guard, whom Gibb identified as "Jorge," purported to have witnessed Linares fraternizing with the group, which was nicknamed the "Little Angels," and to have heard them praise Linares for the killing. The article furthermore attributes full knowledge of the assassination to the [[CIA]] as far back as 1983.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/mar/23/features11.g21|title=The killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero was one of the most notorious crimes of the cold war. Was the CIA to blame?|newspaper=The Guardian|date=23 March 2000}}</ref><ref name=scarend>{{cite news| url = https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/mar/23/features11.g21| title = The killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero was one of the most notorious crimes of the cold war. Was the CIA to blame?| date = 22 March 2000| work = [[The Guardian]]| location = London| access-date  = 13 August 2015| quote = in mid-1983, an unusually detailed CIA report, quoting a senior Salvadoran police source, named Linares as a member of a four-man National Police squad which murdered Romero. Other Salvadoran officers said the same thing. And the man who drove the car which took the killer to the church also picked out a photo-fit of Linares."}}</ref> The article reports that both Linares and the Little Angels commander, who Jorge identified as "El Negro Mario," were killed by a CIA-trained Salvadoran special police unit in 1986; the unit had been assigned to investigate the murders. In 1983, U.S. Lt. Col. [[Oliver North]], an aide to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, is alleged to have personally requested the Salvadoran military to "remove" Linares and several others from their service. Three years later they were pursued and extrajudicially killed – Linares after being found in neighbouring Guatemala. The article cites another source in the Salvadoran military as saying "they knew far too much to live".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/mar/23/features11.g21 |title=The killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero was one of the most notorious crimes of the cold war. Was the CIA to blame?|first=Tom|last=Gibb|date=22 March 2000|work=The Guardian}}</ref>

In a 2010 article for the Salvadoran online newspaper ''[[El Faro (digital newspaper)|El Faro]]'',<ref name=elfaro /> Saravia was interviewed from a mountain hideout.<ref name=elfaro /> He named D'Aubuisson as giving the assassination order to him over the phone,<ref name=elfaro /><ref>Anne-Marie O'Connor. "Participant in 1980 assassination of Romero in El Salvador provides new details," ''Washington Post'', 6 April 2010.</ref> and said that he and his cohorts drove the assassin to the chapel and paid him 1,000 [[Salvadoran colón]]es after the event.<ref name=elfaro />

In April 2017, however, in the wake of the overruling of a civil war [[amnesty]] law the previous year, a judge in El Salvador, Rigoberto Chicas, allowed the case against the escaped Saravia's alleged role in the murder of Romero to be reopened. On 23 October 2018, days after Romero's canonization, Judge Chicas issued a new arrest warrant for him, and Interpol and the National Police are charged with finding his hideout and apprehending him.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/39720/arrest-warrant-issued-for-alleged-killer-of-saint-oscar-romero | title=Arrest warrant issued for alleged killer of Saint Oscar Romero}}</ref><ref name="thetabletwarrant">{{cite web|last=Guidos|first=Rhina|date=25 October 2018|title=Judge Orders Arrest of Longtime Suspect in St. Romero's 1980 Killing|url=https://thetablet.org/judge-orders-arrest-of-longtime-suspect-in-st-romeros-killing/|magazine=[[The Tablet]]|publisher=Tablet Publishing Company|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181026005239/https://thetablet.org/judge-orders-arrest-of-longtime-suspect-in-st-romeros-killing/|archive-date=26 October 2018|access-date=28 October 2018}}</ref> As both D'Aubuisson and Linares had already died, they could not be prosecuted.