Former Salvadoran military leader gets 21 months in prison on US immigration violations

BOSTON – A former Salvadoran military colonel accused of war crimes has been sentenced to 21 months in prison on U.S. immigration charges.

Seventy-year-old Inocente (in-oh-SENT'-ay) Orlando Montano was sentenced Tuesday in Boston following a three-day sentencing hearing. He pleaded guilty to three counts of immigration fraud and three counts of perjury after his 2011 arrest in Massachusetts.

Montano was once El Salvador's vice minister of public security.

A United Nations commission previously named him a participant in a meeting to plot the slaying of a priest suspected of supporting rebels. That meeting allegedly led to the 1989 slayings of six priests and two other people in El Salvador.

Montano has denied involvement, but he was indicted by Spanish authorities in 2011 in connection with the Jesuit slayings.