Friends Suggest Missing priest A Victim of Salvadoran Right

Friends and employees of Roy Bourgeois, an American priest who has been missing since Monday in El Salvador, yesterday challenged El Salvador's president juse Duarte a assertion that Bourgeols "many have disappeared of his own accord," or that "he might have secretly joined the leftist guerrillas."

Bourgeols, a member of the Catholic Maryknoll order, had been acting as a translator in El Salvador for WBBM, a Chicago television station owned by CBS.

Micheal Lavery, a New York-based Maryknoll layman who is a friend of Bourgeois, said yesterday Duarte's statement was "an attempt to unjustly blame the victim, and to lessen any possible suspicion of the El Salvadoran paramilitary's involvement in the priest's disappearance."

John Zucker, WBBM's press manager, said yesterday that WBBM staff members in El Salvador have tried to talk with "people from both sides. Including the leftist opposition," but added that she does not know of any personal contacts between Bourgeois and the guerrillas.

Both Lavery and Zucker said they thought it was likely that right-wing security forces were responsible for Bourgeois' disappearance. "It's impossible to say for sure that it was the paramilitary, but historically that's who's been attacking the church all along in El Salvador," Lavery said.

Kate Marshall, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said yesterday. "We're not going to speculate about who did it. The terrible thing about violence in El Salvador is that nobody knows who does it."

Marshall also said Colonel Jose Guillermo Garcia. El Salvador's Defense and public Security Minister, is conducting an investigation in Bourgeois' disappearance. She added that the U.S. consular office in San Salvador is working with the three El Salvadoran detectives assigned to the case