A jury in El Salvador has found three of the suspects on trial for the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982 guilty in a landmark case for the country.

Former defense minister Guillermo Garcia, the former police chief Francisco Antonio Morán, and ex infantry brigade colonel Mario Reyes Mena were all sentenced to 15 years in prison, local media said. The men, 91, 93, and 85 respectively, were not present at the sentencing on Tuesday.

Morán and Garcia were arrested in 2022. Mena, who was found to have ordered the murders in 1993 following an investigation by a UN truth-finding commission, is still in the United States.

The state of El Salvador was also found guilty of prevarication.

Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Joop Willemsen and Hans ter Laag were in El Salvador to report for television channel IKON on the bloody civil war there. They were ambushed and killed by government soldiers when trying to enter an area of the country held by guerrillas.

After decades of trying to get those responsible to stand trial, the hearing was to have taken place in April but was then delayed because of a lawyer for one of the suspects could not be in court for medical reasons.

According to Gert Kuiper, brother of the murdered Jan, this was a “legal trick”. The relatives of the four journalists did not make the journey this time.

“This decision is extremely important, not just for the relatives but for El Salvador,” NOS Central America correspondent Boris van der Spek said.

“It is the first time a case from the civil war investigated by the UN has resulted in a conviction. Other relatives of victims of the civil war are now hoping this will create a precedent and that there will be more convictions after decades of impunity,” he said.

The convictions are final and cannot be appealed.