Guatemalas top court has overturned the genocide conviction of former U.S.-backed military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. In a historic verdict earlier this month, Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years for genocide and crimes against humanity in the killings of more than 1,700 Ixil Mayan people in the early 1980s. But now the status of the verdict is in question. In a three-to-two ruling Monday, the Guatemalan constitutional court dismissed all the cases proceedings dating back to a month ago. It was then that the court first annulled the case amidst a dispute between judges over jurisdiction.
In the run-up to its latest decision to overturn, the court had come under heavy lobbying from Ríos Montt supporters, including the military and Guatemalas powerful business association. Ríos Montt remains in a military hospital, where he was admitted last week. His legal status is now up in the air. He will likely be released into house arrest, and it is unclear when or if he will return to court.
Helen Mack, Kate Doyle talking:
It was not unpredictable. Since the very beginning, it was very clear the legal strategy that the defense wanted, they never wanted to discuss or to dismiss all the charges that were given to Rodríguez Sánchez and Ríos Montt, so everybody was expecting this. And I think that, for Guatemala, we lost an opportunity, and for the victims, its a misrespect. But overall is that it is in evidence that the justice system doesnt work for everybody, that we are not equal before law. Its just for an elite that it works. And due process is only according to what I want to be understand. Its not what is the laws.
Every ruling that they have been given is under illegal issues, because this is the defendant, in somethe defense. In many of this isthere is a law that says, even in thetwo judges from the Constitutional Court has dissented opinions and saying, “We are notwe dont have to rule right now, because thats from ordinary justice.” And even though they want to do it, because they want to cancel, they have never had the intention to really discuss in a healthy way if there was or there wasnt genocide.
September 11, 1990, with the murder of Myrna Mack. My sister was making an academic research about the displaced people. And, of course, she was documenting many of the stories and everything that happened in the Ixil area. And thats why she was killed.
And so, she documented that, and that is part of what we were discussing now in the genocide case. So, even many of her notes were part of thein this process in the genocide case, but also it was part of the [inaudible]the peace accords of the returning for the displaced and refugees people, her studies. And thats why its like a extended justice also for my sister. Everything has been proved now academically and also by the testimonies.
The army killed her. It was the high presidential high command. As the genocide case took 13 years to build the case, it also took, to me, also 14 years to build the case. So that means that when they accuse us that there is no people from the guerrilla on trial, I can ask them, “How many of the military victims have had the patience to build a case for 14 years?” So those are, you know, the arguments
I was really more conservative than what I am. And then I understood that justice doesnt have any ideology. Justice is justice. It doesnt matter if youre right- or left-wing. Justice is justice. And what you want is punishment for those who have violated the law.
The National Security Archive has worked for many years to try to uncover the hidden history of the U.S. policy in Guatemala and other places around the world. And one of the contributions that we made to this particular case was to obtain the declassification of CIA and Pentagon and embassy files that specifically identified what Guatemalan military officers, were posted where in 1982, what kind of strategy and tactics were the Guatemalan military using at that time, and even talking about some of the specific massacres that are at stake in this case. Its important that the United States had such a close and supportive relationship with the Guatemalan army all through the civil conflict. For that reason, the U.S. files, secret files, are filled with information about how Guatemala was functioning at that time, and the Ríos Montt regime, in particular.
The U.S. had, some years prior, cut off overt military assistance to Guatemala under Jimmy Carter and the U.S. Congresss restrictions on aid under human rights conditions. But the U.S. was extremely eager to embrace Ríos Montt as an ally within its own strategic interests in Central America at the time of the war againstthe secret war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The U.S. was in search of partners in the region to help them promote and promulgate that secret war. And though the U.S. overt aid was cut off long before, CIA funds, millions of dollars, continued to flow to military intelligence in Guatemala, we discovered in a scandal some years later.
the case of Myrna Mack, tried inwas tried in 2002. It was done byordered by the presidential high command. General Edgar Augusto Godoy Gaitán was there; Juan Valencia Osorio, who was the convicted colonel; and Juan Guillermo Oliva Carrera. What happened is that, because the reasonable doubt, they absolved the general and the other one, and they convicted Valencia Osorio. But then, when the police and the Ministério Público were going to capture him, a military unit came in, and they took him, and they helped him to flew, soto flee, so thats why its an impunity, that case.
current government officials were also implicated or involved in some of the genocide that was conducted against the Mayan people. we have a president that is a military, many other people feel that is a threat for transitional justice. And in Guatemala, there has been a spirit of espíritu de cuerpo? A kind of blood oath.
If they talk, I mean, thats whybecause thats what had happened in Argentina. When someone started talking, it was like the domino effect. And thats what they are trying not to happen in Guatemala. So that is why its so hard to get convictions in Guatemala or to make military to talk. So its about the importance of the documents that the National Security Archive has done, its a documentary evidence. And then you have testimonies that verified that that was truth and thats whats happened.
The survivors of the massacres, who spoke the first time around in March and April, are waiting in the wings, and if they have to speak again, they will speak again. Excuse me. The prosecutors are preparing to fight for their case. And there is no doubt in my mind that the team that brought this case to trial, that spent more than 10 years doing thatand, really, we should talk, when we talk about the survivors, spent more than 30 years doing that, saving those stories for this moment. That team is waiting to proceed. And the kinds of legal manipulation weve seen in this case, as Helen pointed out, has happened over and over again. Its not just in the case of the assassination of her sister; its in many other cases. And this is par for the course for the defense team in Guatemala. Unfortunately, they dont have a legal argument to protect their client, and so they are using legal manipulation to try to game the system.
It is unclear today at this moment what is going to happen. There is the potential that this entire case will be moved to another tribunal so as not to pose the threat of double jeopardy to the defendant by hearing it in the same tribunal.
I just want to make a difference between this case and my sisters case. I would say that in my sisters case it was more clean, in that sense they allowed the system to work. In this genocide case, they havent allowed the system to work. They have been manipulating since the very beginning, so the rule of law, it has been weakening, especially the judicial power. And I think that is the worst thing that had happened. I think that the idea and the strategy of changing to another tribunal is to make them free and there is no conviction for genocide case.
the declassified CIA documents that your organization, the National Security Archive, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. It was a February 5th, 1982, document that states, “The Guatemalan militarys plans to begin sweeps through the Ixil Triangle area, which has the largest concentrations of guerillas and sympathizers in the country could lead not only to major clashes but to serious abuses by the armed forces.” The document goes on to say Chief of Staff General Benedicto Lucas García indicated, quote, “it probably will be necessary to destroy a number of villages.”
Another declassified CIA document, also from February ’82, describes the Guatemalan army “sweep” operation through the Ixil Triangle in El Quiché. According to the cable’s authorthis is the U.S. governmentthe army had yet to encounter a major guerrilla force in the area. Its successes were limited to the destruction of entire villages and the killing of peasants suspected of collaborating with rebels. The document says the armys belief that the entire indigenous population of Ixil supports the guerrillas, quote, “has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike.”
The Reagan administration not only continued to secretly funnel millions of dollars, but they openly flacked for this government. People like Elliott Abrams, who was the assistant secretary for human rights, for crying out loud, was out there on the television and before the press and before the Congress over and over again telling the U.S. public how democratic and what a reformist this man was and why we had to support him. If your listeners or your viewers want to take a look at the original declassified U.S. documents in this case and many others, they can go to the National Security Archives website, which is nsarchive.org/Guatemala.
– source democracynow.org
Helen Mack, one of Guatemalas most well-known human rights activists. She is the president of the Myrna Mack Foundation, named after her sister an anthropologist who was assassinated in Guatemala on Sept. 11, 1990. Helen spent 14 years bringing the officers and generals responsible for her sisters murder to justice. She recently attended and monitored parts of the Ríos Montt genocide trial.
Kate Doyle, senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America and the director at the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. She attended the Ríos Montt genocide trial in Guatemala and filed reports from inside the courtroom for the Open Society Foundation. She is the winner of the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism and featured in the documentary Granito: How to Nail a Dictator.