This report was made by Donald T. Fox, Esquire Attorney-at-law in New York upon his mission to El Salvador in July 1978 to study the application of the November 1977 “law of defence and guarantee of public order”.
It contains six parts:
- Geopolitical context (social and economic development, political evolution)
- Promulgation of the Law of Defence and Guarantee of Public Order
- Constitutional and juridical framework (Political Constitution of the Republic, Organic Law of the Judicial Power, Criminal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure)
- Analysis of the Law of Defence and Guarantee of Public Order
- Implementation of the Law
- Conclusions
“Although the effects of the law would seem to clearly be contrary to the stated intention of the government to assure individual rights and public order and general welfare, the most serious abuses that take place are to be corrected only by amendment of the October 1977 change in the Code of Criminal Procedure. As long as the standards there provided for receiving extra-judicial declarations are preserved in considering cases under the law, no overhaul of the text of the Law for the Defence and Guarantee of the Public Order will be sufficient to achieve its ends.”
El Salvador-defence and guarantee of public order-fact finding mission report-1978-eng (full text in English, PDF)