SECTION: MAIN NEWS; Metro Desk; Part A; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 862 words

A former Salvadoran army officer convicted of killing priests is arrested in L.A. as a human rights violator.

BYLINE: Hector Becerra, Times Staff Writer

Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos was a decorated, American-trained officer in the Salvadoran army.

But for the last year, the 43-year-old toiled as a janitor at a West Los Angeles-area motel, a man with a secret who was always looking over his shoulder, his girlfriend said.

His clandestine existence came to an end Wednesday, when federal authorities announced that they had arrested him as an illegal immigrant who was a human rights violator.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Guevara Cerritos was one of nine Salvadoran officers and soldiers implicated in one of the most notorious massacres in El Salvador's history: the 1989 death squad murders of six Jesuit priests whom some in the army viewed as subversives.

A sublieutenant with the Atlacatl Battalion during El Salvador's war against the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a leftist guerrilla group, Guevara Cerritos was convicted for his role in the slayings.

In 1993, he received a pardon as part of a general amnesty that was granted after the country's 12-year civil war.

His girlfriend, Eusebia Mejia, 45, said Guevara Cerritos could never escape the shadow of the massacre and fled to the United States in hopes of a new start.

But when he arrived in Los Angeles -- home to more than 250,000 Salvadorans -- he quickly realized he would not find peace. Fearing that someone would recognize him on the streets of Los Angeles, he kept his head down and rarely went out.