Guatemala's Death Squad Dossier Case Being Dismantled By Corrupt Political-Legal Systems

4 APR 2023 | COMMENTARY

by Jo-Marie Burt and Paulo Estrada

For decades, survivors and the families of the victims of the Death Squad Dossier case have been demanding truth and justice. After years of no answers about the perpetrators or the whereabouts of their loved ones, who were arbitrarily detained, tortured, killed or disappeared between 1983 and 1985, the tail end of Guatemala’s 36-year internal armed conflict, a pathway to justice opened: in May 2021, eleven retired military and police officials were arrested. The detention of four others, including one civilian, followed. The families dared to hope that, at last, they might see justice done.

But with an increasingly co-opted justice system and a majority of judges exiled or beholden to mafias and corrupt politicians, that hope is fading fast.

The Death Squad Dossier, or Diario Militar case, is the most important transitional justice case in Guatemala since the 2013 Maya Ixil genocide trial. It involves the forced disappearance, extrajudicial execution, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual abuse of at least 195 Guatemalans during the military government of Humberto Mejía Víctores (1983-1986).

One of Guatemala’s most well-known and respected judges, Miguel Ángel Gálvez, formerly of High Risk Court “B,” presided over the preliminary phase of the case. He broke new ground in 2016 when he seized critical military documents relevant to it. He began hearing the evidence against the first suspects and, in May 2022, ordered nine of them to trial. The evidentiary phase was filled with devastating accounts. The judge heard the testimonies of women who were children at the time the security forces came to their homes searching for their parents, and who were brutally raped. He heard how six of the 131 victims of forced disappearance were later found at the Comalapa military base, in 2011.

More:
https://www.wola.org/analysis/guatemalas-death-squad-dossier-case-being-dismantled-by-corrupt-political-legal-systems/