El Salvador arrests ex-soldier in slaying of US advisers El Salvador police say they've arrested a man convicted of participating in the 1981 killing of two American labor advisers and the head of the country's land reform agency _ a case that shook U.S. relations with the Central American nation

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- El Salvador police say they've arrested a man convicted of participating in the 1981 killing of two American labor advisers and the head of the country's land reform agency — a case that shook U.S. relations with a Central American nation then embroiled in civil war.

Police said Sunday they had arrested Jose Dimas Valle Acevedo, who had been a corporal in the now-disbanded National Guard.

He was one of two men who confessed to gunning down land reform chief Jose Rodolfo Viera, as well as Michael Peter Hammer and Mark David Pearlman, U.S. citizens working with the AFL-CIO.

Both gunmen were freed under a 1987 amnesty law that was overturned in 2016.

A U.N. truth commission said the slaying apparently was ordered by prominent businessmen, but charges were dropped.