Allan Nairn talking:
its important that the trial was able to go forward. Yesterday, it was still possible that it would be shut down at the last minute. But now, clearly, the political decision has been made to let it go forward, and the only thing that could stop it at this point would be an assassination. The judge in the case, when she leaves the courtroom, she wears a bulletproof vest. Shes surrounded by security. Army associates have made death threats against judges, prosecutors and witnesses. But unless they carry through and pull the trigger sometime this morning, it looked likeit looks like theres going to be a verdict.
And if there is a verdict, and Ríos Montt and his co-defendant, General Rodríguez Sánchez, are convicted of genocide and/or crimes against humanity, it would be ait would be a step into theinto the future. It would be, I think, in a sense, the beginning of another historical phase, because all over the world, not just in Guatemala but wherever you have guns and wherever you have power, those who have the most guns are allowed to get away with murder. There is no fear of prosecution for a Guatemalan dictator, for a U.S. president. They can do things that would get an ordinary person thrown in jail.
But actions like this, where survivors of the Mayan highland massacres campaigned for three decades, remembering their wives and their husbands who were slit open with machetes and shot in the face and thrown into ditches while they were still alive, the fact that they were able to campaign for decades, and even though their movement was crushed during the slaughters of the ’80s, even though the army and the oligarchy to this day retain power in Guatemala, the people they crushed are on the verge of exacting some justice and may be getting a jail sentence against one of the main people responsible for the deaths ofI mean, nobody knows the exact death toll of all the slaughters. Ríos Montt in this case is being charged with just 1,700 murders, but the complete death toll over the years in Guatemala could amount to something like a quarter million. And no one has really been able to do this before. No one has been able to use their domestic courts to put a former leader on trial for genocide. This is the kind of move that would be unthinkable in the United States. You know, standing in the courtroom yesterday, I was trying to imagine what would the scene be like in the U.S. if, say, George W. Bush were called before a criminal court in Texas and put on trial for Iraq. It’s hard to imagine, but here its happening.
in May of 82, a couple months after he had seized power and sent the army sweeping through the northwest highlands, including the Ixil area, as the army was just wiping out one town after another, executing the civilians, I asked Ríos Montt about the civilian killings. And he said, “Look, for each one who is shooting,” meaning for each guerrilla, “there are 10 working behind them,” meaning there are 10 unarmed people working behind them. And then his adviser, Francisco Bianchi, said, “We have to kill Indians, the Ixil people, because they have sold out to subversion.”
Years later, after Ríos Montt was ousted from power, I interviewed him again. And I asked him whether he thought that he should be put on trial for his role in the massacres and whether he should be executed, since he, Ríos Montt, is a big supporter of the death penalty. And when I asked him that, he suddenly leapt up to his feet and shouted. He said, “Yes, try me! Put me against the wall!” But, he said, that if he was going to be put on trial, the Americans should be put on trial with him. He specifically mentioned Ronald Reagan, who was one of his great sponsors.
These massacres were not secret. They were acts of state terrorism where a big part of the point was publicity. When the assassinations were done in the cities, they would often make a point of throwing the bodies in the streets to terrify onlookers. In the massacres in the countryside, the executions wouldand torture interrogations would often be carried out in the village square with all the survivors looking on so they would get a lifelong lesson that they would never forget, as they saw their families and their loved ones being strangled and shot in the head. This was all over the newspapers in Guatemala. The Catholic Bishops Conference in May of ’82, that same month that I had the interview with Ríos Montt where he talked about 10 civilians for every guerrilla, and his aide said they had sold out to subversion, they had to be killedthe Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued a pastoral letter saying, “Never in our history has it come to such grave extremes. These assassinations now fall into the category of genocide.”
And the U.S. was in fact supporting Ríos Montt. The meeting between Reagan and Ríos Montt was very nice for Ríos Montt, because Reagan then came out publicly and said that Ríos Montt was a man of great integrity who was totally devoted to democracy and was getting a bum rap on human rights. Ríos Montt then said, “Its not that we have a policy of scorched earth, just a policy of scorched communists.”
I think one of the interesting points about Ríos Montts statement yesterday and those of the defense lawyers was that they were trying to save themselves, but they wereto do that, they were willing to indict the system. None of them tried to deny the fact that the mass killings took place, or even deny the fact that it was the army that did it. In fact, Ríos Montts defense lawyer at one point referred to one of the prosecution documents, which was a military plan that was used by Ríos Montt describing how they would target various civilian groups. And the lawyers point was: This plan was not directed at the Ixil people; this plan was written for the entire country. Well, yes, it was. The defense lawyer for Rodríguez Sánchez, the intelligence chief who is Ríos Montts co-defendant, at one point he said, “Program of assassination, program of kidnappingsIm not interested in those, because my client didnt have the power to order them.” So he was not denying the fact that there was a program of assassination. He was not denying the fact that there was a program of kidnapping. He was just saying that his man wasnt responsible for them, even though he was the boss of the intelligence section.
Ríos Montt knew everything that was happening. The reporting from the field back to the palace was very rigorous. There were only three, and at some points two, layers of authority between Ríos Montt and the killers, the killer commanders in the field who were going into the villages. Ríos Montts field commander for the Ixil region based in Nebaj in September of 1982 was Otto Pérez Molina, the current president of Guatemala. The dozens and dozens of subordinates of Pérez Molina who I interviewed there at that time described how they were under orders to torture and kill civilians, and also how they made hourly radio reports back to headquarters. They wrote up a daily diary of operations. As one Subcommander Lieutenant Romeo Sierra put it, they were on a verythey were on a very short leash.
So, if Ríos Montt is found guilty of genocide, then the question becomes: Well, what about the man who was the field commander for the massacres that got Ríos Montt convicted of genocide? That man is now the president of Guatemala. Pérez Molina did everything he could to see to it that his name did not come up in this trial. That was the bargain under which the trial was allowed to go forward. He let it go forward very, very reluctantly. One witness, to everyones surprise, a former military man, testified that Pérez Molina had ordered atrocities. I was due to testify in the trial but then was blocked at the last minute from testifying because there was fear that I would also mention Pérez Molinas role. But now, as thisif this trial concludes, and if Ríos Montt is convicted, the next question becomes: What about Pérez Molina? And, what about the U.S. sponsors who were providing the weapons, the money, the bombs, the bullets and the political support for the crimes for which Ríos Montt may today be convicted of genocide? Because Guatemalan criminal courts have the authority under international law to bring in U.S. defendants. U.S. criminal courts have that same authority. If theres a verdict today against Ríos Montt, that will be the challenge sitting on theput to the American and the Guatemalan criminal courts: Whats next? Will you now look at Pérez Molina? Will you now look at the Americans who made this genocide possible?
army, the retired army and the oligarchy. They have been putting these lists out for years. They threaten everybody. This is their way of acting. But so far, they have not been able to stop the case.
So far, they havent been able to stop the case. And the only way they could stop it now is if they follow through on their threats and try to kill the judge.
– source democracynow.org
Allan Nairn, investigative journalist who has been attending the Ríos Montt trial in Guatemala.