FBI may investigate Salvadoran congressmen murder

GUATEMALA CITY, Feb 22 (Reuters) Central American authorities have asked the FBI to help solve the murder of three Salvadoran representatives to Central America's regional parliament in Guatemala this week.

''There is a section of the FBI that works with Central America and we are inviting them to give us a hand,'' Guatemalan President Oscar Berger told reporters yesterday.

Earlier in the day, the FBI said it would be willing to help the investigation if asked.

The three deputies to the Guatemala-based Central American parliament Eduardo D'Aubuisson, William Pichinte and Jose Ramon Gonzalez were on their way to an official meeting on Monday when they were attacked. Their driver was also killed also.

Their car and bodies were discovered unrecognizably charred on a farm outside the capital.

Authorities are not ruling out political motives for the killings or possible links to organized crime rings.

The regional parliament has been mired in drug trafficking scandals in recent years, with some congressmen accused of using their diplomatic status to smuggle narcotics.

Central America is a major corridor for illegal drug trafficking.

Guatemala has one of the highest murder rates in Latin America, but a faltering justice system means less than 2 per cent of the crime investigations end in convictions.

The three congressmen were traveling in a convoy with other legislators overland from El Salvador and were accompanied by Guatemalan police on the highway.

Once they reached the capital, the congressmen's cars went their separate ways without police protection, Guatemalan authorities said. D'Aubuisson, Pichinte and Gonzalez never showed up at their hotel.

Medical examiners said each deputy had a single bullet wound in the skull and the bodies were so badly burnt that dental records were used to identify some.

Leo Navarete, the legal attache at the FBI office in El Salvador, said agents were standing by and ready to help local investigators.

''We can help them if they need any DNA testing or if they need one of our evidence response teams to deploy to the crimes scene,'' he said.

All the congressman were from Salvadoran President Antonio Saca's Nationalist Republican Alliance party, known as ARENA.

Eduardo D'Aubuisson was the son of the party's founder Roberto D'Aubuisson, accused of heading death squads during the 1980s civil war.

The killings occurred on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the elder D'Aubuisson's death from throat cancer. He was found by a UN-backed truth commission to have ordered the assassination of the country's Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Reuters SY DB1019