Efraín Ríos Montt held to account for abuses in campaign that killed an estimated 200,000 and led to 45,000 disappearances
By Sibylla Brodzinsky and Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, May 11, 2013
The former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide on Friday after a court found him guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison. It is the first time a former head of state has been found guilty of genocide in their own country.
"We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide," said Judge Yazmin Barrios, adding that Ríos Montt "had knowledge of what was happening and did nothing to stop it".
The trial was the first time a former head of government has been held to account in Guatemala for the abuses carried out during a 36-year conflict that killed an estimated 200,000 people and led to 45,000 other "disappearances". The vast majority of the victims were members of indigenous groups that make up about half of the population.
The verdict was hailed by victims' groups and human rights organisations as a step towards healing the psychological wounds from one of Latin America's bloodiest civil wars. His co-defendant, former intelligence chief José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, was cleared by the court.
"This is healthy for Guatemala because it helps us free our demons," said Helen Mack, a businesswoman and prominent human rights activist whose sister, an anthropologist, was killed by the Guatemalan army in 1990.
Pascal Paradis, director of Lawyers Without Borders Canada, which has advised the victims' lawyers throughout the case, said the fact the trial happened at all was a big achievement. "It was quite a feat to get past the amnesty law that was passed when Guatemala signed a peace deal in 1996 to end its 36-year war. Impunity is no longer the rule," he said.
Others said the jailing of the 86-year-old was not enough, given the suffering of the victims. "What I want is for Ríos to feel the pain we felt," said Elena de Paz Santiago, who was 12 when she and her mother fled a massacre in their village in 1982.
They hid in the mountains and survived by eating roots and wild plants for months, before being caught and taken to an army outpost to cook and clean for the soldiers. Her mother died while they were both being gang-raped and was later buried in a mass grave. "He [Rios Montt] will go to jail but he will have food. We nearly starved hiding out in the mountains," she said in an interview outside the courtroom.
The legal battle is also far from over and Ríos Montt is expected to appeal. "We still have a long way to go," said Edwin Canil, a legal adviser to the victims who helped build the case against Rios Montt and is himself a survivor of a massacre in 1982.
The defence team challenged the validity of the trial throughout the three weeks of hearings. Zury Rios, the former dictator's daughter, complained of the "legal mismanagement" of the trial by the three-judge panel and what she called the "arbitrary form" in which it was conducted.
Former Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt goes on trial
Guatemala City trial levels charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against 86-year-old
Jo Tuckman, The Guardian, March 19, 2013
Former Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt faced charges of genocide and crimes against humanity on the first day of a tense trial which few believed until recently would ever be possible.
Ríos Montt headed a military government that began with a coup in March 1982 – and ended with another 17 months later – at the height of a civil war in which the army severely weakened a leftwing insurgency by carrying out massacres of the civilian population in the Mayan indigenous heartland where the guerrillas were based.
Prosecutors are hoping to prove that Ríos Montt must have been aware, and was consequently responsible for, a set of atrocities that resulted in the deaths of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayans in three towns in the country's western highlands while he was head of the government and counterinsurgency strategy.
They are expected to pay particular attention to the strict military chain of command he himself appeared to boast about in an interview for a 1982 documentary in which he said, "If I can't control the army, then what am I doing here?"
The retired general sat facing a group of victims in a Guatemala City courtroom while activists demonstrated in support of the prosecution outside. Reed Brody, a representative of the US-based Human Rights Watch, said the 86-year-old former dictator was "alert and taking notes" during the proceedings and occasionally even appeared jovial.
His lawyer, Francisco Garcia, told the court that no genocide had ever existed. "Ríos Montt never gave a written or verbal order to exterminate the Ixils in this country," he reportedly said.
Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, a former high-ranking member of the military also on trial, denied charges against him.
An estimated 200,000 people died and 45,000 disappeared during Guatemala's 36-year civil war that ended with peace accords in 1996 and represents one of the bloodiest episodes in modern Latin America history.
A United Nations backed truth commission blamed most of hundreds of massacres during the war on the army and army-backed paramilitaries. It concluded that attacks on specific indigenous groups constituted genocide because the strategy was to kill as many members of these groups as possible.
The prosecution of Ríos Montt is the first time that a former head of state has been put on trial for genocide by a national tribunal. Efforts to bring him to trial have been going on for many years but his position as leader of a popular rightwing political party, as well as elected posts in the national parliament that have him automatic immunity, made it all seem like fantasy to many.
The final push began in January 2012, but the trial was repeatedly stalled by a Ríos Montt's defence team.
Brody said: "This is not only about the country's past but about its present as well. In a country in which the powerful have always been above the law, just the fact of this trial is a historic affirmation that justice can exist."