Ponce Dead of a Heart Attack

From the AP

The Salvadoran Defense Department says an army general accused of ordering the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests and two others has died.

The department says Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce died Monday of heart failure. He was 64.

Ponce was one of 14 Salvadoran military officials facing an investigation for crimes against humanity ordered in 2009 by a Spanish judge. No charges were ever filed against Ponce.

A U.N. truth commission found Ponce ordered the killings of the Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter when he was a colonel in the Salvadoran army. The priests had been suspected of sympathizing with the country's leftist rebel movement.

Ponce was promoted to general the year after the massacre. He was defense minister from 1990 to 1993.

One of the men most responsible for ordering the murder of the Jesuits in November 1989.