More than 20 years after El Salvador’s top military leaders were first accused of horrific acts during the civil war there, a Spanish judge issued warrants for their arrest, charging them for the gruesome planning and killing of six Jesuit priests in 1989.

Judge Eloy Velasco Nuñez of Spain’s National Court accused the Salvadoran militants of “carrying out the most execrable crimes against people merely to impose their strategies and ideas.”

The attacks from the Salvadoran military, which left the priests dead along with their housekeeper and her teenage daughter, were considered so brutal and barbaric that it destroyed relations between El Salvador and the United States. Previously, the U.S. had been providing support for Salvadoran armed forces against the leftist rebels. However, this massacre created international pressure for the U.S to step in with peace negotiations.

Since five of the six Jesuit priests were born in Spain, the Spanish judge was able to use the doctrine of universal jurisdiction to prosecute those responsible for their deaths, despite the fact the crimes were committed outside of the country.

The men who face charges are Rafael Humberto Larios, the Salvadoran Defense Minister at the time; Juan Orlando Zepeda, Vice Defense Minister; and Inocente Orlando Montano, the Vice Minister of Public Safety. Rene Emilio Ponce, the then-Army Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also thought to have given the order for the killings. He died last month in El Salvador.

While there was a trial in El Salvador shortly after the tragedy, seven of the nine officers on trial were found not guilty. The remaining two military officers served only 15 months before being released under an amnesty declared in 1993. Judge Valesco, argued that this trial was a “sham.”

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