Guatemalan gets 6,060-year sentence in massacre

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Guatemalan gets 6,060-year sentence in massacre



By Romina Ruiz-Goiriena
Associated Press / March 13, 2012

GUATEMALA CITY—A former member of an elite Guatemalan military force extradited from the United States last July was sentenced to 6,060 years in prison Monday for his role in the killings of 201 people in a 1982 massacre.

Pedro Pimentel Rios was the fifth former special forces soldier sentenced to 6,060 years or more for what became known as the "Dos Erres" massacre after the northern Guatemala hamlet where the killings occurred during the country's 1960-1996 civil war.

~snip~
Guatemala's civil war claimed at least 200,000 lives before it ended in 1996. The country's U.S.-backed army was responsible for most of the deaths, according to the findings of a truth commission set up to investigate the bloodshed.

In December 1982, several dozen soldiers stormed the village of Dos Erres, searched homes for missing weapons and systematically killed men, women and children. Soldiers bludgeoned villagers with a sledgehammer, threw them down a well, and raped women and girls before killing them, according to court papers filed in a case brought by U.S. prosecutors against another former kaibil.

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2012/03/13/guatemalan_gets_6060_year_sentence_in_massacre/

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. But with good time, he'll get out after serving only 4,040 years.