Americas

Americas

Guatemala judge denies ex-dictator’s amnesty claim

02 March 2012 01:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala’s civil war has no amnesty from charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians, a judge ruled Thursday, APA reports quoting AP.

The decision to strip ex-Gen. Efrain Rios Montt of the pardon granted by his successor more than a quarter-century ago will be appealed to Guatemala’s highest court, his defense said. That means any trial of the 85-year-old former strongman could be months or years away.

Nonetheless, human rights advocates said, Judge Miguel Angel Galvez’s decision is an important symbolic victory for the victims of one of the most horrific of the conflicts that devastated Central America during the last decades of the Cold War.

Guatemala’s leaders have been criticized for years for their inability or unwillingness to prosecute government forces and allied paramilitaries accused of marching into Mayan villages, carrying out rapes and torture, and slaughtering women, children and unarmed men in a "scorched earth" campaign aimed at eliminating the support for a left-wing guerrilla movement.

Despite a series of international inquiries finding him responsible for war crimes, Rios Montt served as a Guatemalan congressman for 15 years until he lost a re-election race late last year. He had held immunity from prosecution while a member of Congress and was put under house arrest after losing his post.

One of the highest priorities of the president who won last year’s election, Otto Perez Molina, has been campaigning for the elimination of a U.S. ban on military aid to Guatemala, which is locked in a fight against heavily armed drug cartels that have taken over swathes of the country.

Among the conditions set by the U.S. Congress for restoring the aid is reforming Guatemala’s justice system and putting an end to impunity.

The decision to hold Rios Montt responsible for war crimes committed during his 1982-83 regime could stand as a precedent in the cases of two other former generals accused alongside Rios Montt and of dozens of other lower-ranking military men accused of participating in atrocities, victims’ advocates said.

"This proves that Guatemala’s judiciary is willing to uphold their international responsibilities even against the most powerful and this is significant," said Marcie Mersky, program director for the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York.

Galvez ruled that a 1986 amnesty law passed by Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores, who ousted Rios Montt, was invalidated by an international treaty against genocide that Guatemala signed in 1949.

Rios Montt is accused of authorizing 1,400 human rights violations, the displacement of 29,000 indigenous Guatemalans and 1,771 killings, many under a program intended to completely eliminate an indigenous Mayan ethnic group known as the Ixil.

"There are crimes like genocide and crimes against humanity that have no statute of limitations, and for that reason there can be no amnesty decree," Galvez said.

Hundreds of Mayans from Quiche province, where most of the massacres occurred, attended the hearing and ran after Rios Montt as he left the courtroom, impassive and silent. The Indians were blocked from reaching Rios Montt by soldiers and his bodyguards.

When the charges were brought in January, Rios Montt told the court, "I understand what the prosecution is saying and I won’t respond." He later added, "The point is to do justice, not vengeance."

Edgar Perez, a lawyer representing the victims, said the ruling "means that a fair trial is being held, because these are crimes of international importance."

Defense lawyer Francisco Palomo said the judge’s decision would be appealed.

"This is a long process, and the Constitutional Court (Guatemala’s highest tribunal) will be the one to decide," Palomo said.

Rios Montt, who took power in a 1982 coup and was toppled the following year, was appealing charges filed in January by another judge, the first time a Latin American court had charged a former president with genocide.

The former dictator was told not to communicate with others accused in the case, which also involves former Gens. Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez and Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, the army chief of staff under Rios Montt.

Both men are in their 80s and say poor health has kept them from court proceedings.