The Jig Is Up in Guatemala

The Jig Is Up in Guatemala
By Patricia Davis
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus
Saturday, May 25, 2013

The May 10 genocide conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was groundbreaking—he was the first former head of state convicted of genocide by his country’s own courts.

The court found that the army’s atrocities under Ríos Montt—including the extrajudicial execution of 1,771 indigenous Ixil people, mass rapes, and forced displacement—were aimed at destroying the Maya Ixil ethnic group, which the government considered to be an internal enemy and support base of the guerrillas fighting Guatemala’s U.S.-backed regime. Ríos Montt was sentenced to 50 years in prison for genocide and 30 years for crimes against humanity.

But on May 20 Guatemala’s highest court, ruling on appeals filed by the defense, annulled Ríos Montt’s 80-year sentence. The Constitutional Court declared invalid all proceedings that took place after April 19, including the verdict and sentencing. Whether the trial can be picked up again from that date is unclear.

What is clear, however, is that the trial has lifted the curtain on Guatemala’s bloody past. The verdict reached far beyond the question of how a man who once commanded a brutal army will spend his last years.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-jig-is-up-in-guatemala-by-patricia-davis