Post date: May 11, 2013 10:22:23 AM
Guatemalan court finds ex-dictator Rios Montt guilty of genocide charges and sentenced to 50 years in prison for genocide and 30 years for crimes against humanity.
GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA (MAY 10, 2013) (REUTERS) - Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt was found guilty on Friday (May 10) of genocide and crimes against humanity during the bloodiest phase of the country's 36-year civil war and was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
"By unanimous decision, the court declares that the accused, Jose Efrain Rios Montt, is responsible as the author of the crime of genocide," said Judge Yasmin Barrios, who presided over the trial, told a packed courtroom where Mayan women wearing colourful traditional clothes and head-dresses closely followed proceedings.Hundreds of people who were packed into the courtroom burst into applause, chanting, "Justice!" as Rios Montt received a 50-year term for the genocide charge and an additional 30 years for crimes against humanity.
"Immediate detention is ordered in order to assure the result of this (court) process and because of the nature of the crimes committed for which he has been condemned. I hereby order he enter prison directly," added the judge.
It was the first time a former head of state had been found guilty of genocide in his or her own country.
Rios Montt, now 86, took power after a coup in 1982 and was accused of implementing a scorched-earth policy in which troops massacred thousands of indigenous villagers thought to be helping leftist rebels. He proclaimed his innocence in court.
Prosecutors say Rios Montt turned a blind eye as soldiers used rape, torture and arson to try to rid Guatemala of leftist rebels during his 1982-1983 rule, the most violent period of a 1960-1996 civil war in which as many as 250,000 people died.
He was tried over the killings of at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil indigenous group, just a fraction of the number who died during his rule.
The human rights group Amnesty International hailed it as the trial of the decade.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu said there are others who should be tried.
"We are using the universal law. In other words, each person has inherent rights and, therefore, it is a farce to say that if one is judged, all will be judged. We are not all. We are not things. If someone else is guilty of a crime, he is welcome to come and sit among the accused," she said.
Rios Montt's intelligence director, Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, also stood trial, but he was acquitted on both charges.
Since the case began on March 19, nearly 100 prosecution witnesses told of massacres, torture and rape by state forces.
Rios Montt has denied the charges, saying he never ordered genocide and had no control over battlefield operations.
Guatemala's civil war ended with peace accords signed in 1996 but the Central American nation remains a deeply divided society with very poor indigenous areas.
Courts in Guatemala have only recently begun prosecutions for atrocities committed during the conflict.
President Otto Perez, a former army general during the civil war, has said he stood up to Rios Montt and declassified U.S. documents from the era suggest Perez was one of the country's most progressive officers and that he played a key role in an ensuing peace process.
Perez has argued that genocide did not take place during the war, underlining the divisions that persist in Guatemala over the conflict, which pitted leftist insurgents against a string of right-wing governments.
Defence attorneys said earlier they would appeal if Rios Montt was convicted. They argued that prosecution witnesses had no credibility, that specific ethnic groups were not targeted under Rios Montt's 17-month rule and that the war pitted belligerents of the same ethnic group against one another.
Defence attorney Fernando Garcia Gudiel said the decision was set before the case was heard.
"We could have done a bit more but we are sure that no matter what we did, the sentence would condemn him anyway. As Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre of theConstitutional Court says, 'When your accuser is a judge, only God can defend you.' And this was a case exactly like that because our accuser was the court," he said.
A judge who initially presided over pre-trial hearings cast a new shadow of doubt over the Rios Montt case on Friday when she confirmed a decision she had announced on April 18 to wind back proceedings to November 2011, and void all developments since then.
Prosecutors insist that decision is illegal and are preparing legal challenges to the ruling, while defence attorneys have argued that the decision is binding and the trial should never have proceeded.