Top court sends Rios Montt trial to new judge

[Judi Lynn]

Top court sends Rios Montt trial to new judge
By SONIA PEREZ DIAZ, Associated Press | April 24, 2013 | Updated: April 24, 2013 12:19am

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala's highest court on Tuesday ordered that the genocide trial against one of the Central American country's former dictators be taken over by a judge who wants the proceedings to go back to square one.

A spokesman for the Constitutional Court, Martin Guzman, said the case of Efrain Rios Montt now goes back to Judge Carol Patricia Flores, who last week ordered that the proceedings start over at a point before the retired general was charged with genocide.

Rios Montt, 86, is accused of responsibility for the deaths of 1,771 Mayan Indians killed during military offensives by the dictatorship that he headed from March 1982 to August 1983. The operations, during a U.S.-backed war against leftist guerrillas, were part of a "scorched earth" campaign aimed at wiping out support for the rebels.

The trial against Rios Montt and Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, 68, a former high-ranking member of the military chiefs of staff, had been nearing closing arguments last week when Flores intervened.

More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Top-court-sends-Rios-Montt-trial-to-new-judge-4458494.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. Guatemala: UN adviser calls on judges to ensure accountability for atrocities

Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Guatemala: UN adviser calls on judges to ensure accountability for atrocities

UN - 23 April 2013 – A senior United Nations official today urged judicial authorities in Guatemala to ensure that legal proceedings continue without interference against the country’s former head of State and former head of intelligence who stand accused of atrocities committed in the Central American nation over 30 years ago.

“I appeal to the judicial authorities to act responsibly and prevent any attempt at interference, obstruction of justice or manipulation of the law, which would seriously undermine the credibility of the judicial system in Guatemala,” Adama Dieng, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, said in a news release.

Guatemala’s former president Efraín Ríos Montt and former intelligence chief José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez stand accused of committing genocide and crimes against humanity for their roles in Guatemala’s civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996 and during which a reported 200,000 people were killed or disappeared.

Despite the charges, on 18 April a first-instance judge called for the annulment of the trial, a decision deemed illegal by the panel of judges overseeing the proceedings. The trial has since been suspended until the country’s constitutional court determines whether it can continue.

“The victims of the atrocities committed during the civil war in Guatemala and their families have waited many years for justice; I hope that they will not have to continue to wait,” continued Mr. Dieng while voicing his concern that “justice delayed is justice denied.”

More:
http://www.ionglobaltrends.com/2013/04/guatemala-un-adviser-calls-on-judges-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FzqKG+%28i+On+Global+Trends%29#.UXd0tuoo7JU

[Catherina]

4. It's beautiful, you have your cake and eat it too

Democratic free elections work too, so long as you're free to pick candidates and issues and purchase ads and influence. And a free press can work nicely as well so long as you're free to own the presses.

So you have a proliferation of non-dictator regimes in which working people are still underpaid or starving and those on top are still meritlessly rich beyond the dreams of any type of necessity.

But since such regimes are also democratic and their press is free, they escape destabilizing quantities of condemnation for freedom-of-expression or human rights abuses.

It's beautiful, you have your cake and eat it too, you bask in enlightened acclaim but at the same time you can fly to Rio on a whim while those who work for you have kids who are hungry.

...

"They killed my father..."

"They burnt our homes..."

"They raped me, one after the other...."

...

http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/a-little-too-close-to-bone.html

Lack of Respect


You walk up and shoot someone in the head. Years later the surviving daughter approaches you.

She asks you to admit what you did was wrong. You laugh at her and keep moving.

No answer, no admission.

The survivor isn't asking for much, but even that you make a point of denying her.

...

Murder's a little hard to process, it's too enormous for the human soul.

But lack of respect is another matter.

...

http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/lack-of-respect.html

[Catherina]

2. Carol Patricia Flores is a dead woman walking

Published on Apr 19, 2013
http://www.democracynow.org - In 1982, investigative journalist Allan Nairn interviewed a Guatemalan general named "Tito" on camera during the height of the indigenous massacres. It turns out the man was actually Otto Pérez Molina, the current Guatemalan president. We air the original interview footage and speak to Nairn about the U.S. role backing the Guatemalan dictatorship. Last week, Nairn flew to Guatemala where he had been scheduled to testify in the trial of former U.S.-backed dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, the first head of state in the Americas to stand trial for genocide. Ríos Montt was charged in connection with the slaughter of more than 1,700 people in Guatemala's Ixil region after he seized power in 1982. His 17-month rule is seen as one of the bloodiest chapters in Guatemala's decades-long campaign against Maya indigenous people, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The trial took a surprising turn last week when Guatemala President Gen. Otto Pérez Molina was directly accused of ordering executions. A former military mechanic named Hugo Reyes told the court that Pérez Molina, then serving as an army major and using the name Tito Arias, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage a Maya Ixil area in the 1980s.


BREAKING NEWS: The Genocide Trial of General Efrain Rios Montt Has Just Been Suspended: A firsthand behind-the-scenes account of how Guatemala's current President and threats of violence killed the case.

By Allan Nairn
Guatemala City
April 18, 2013

...

The bargain under which Perez Molina and the country's elite had let the case go forward was that it would only touch Rios Montt and his codefendant, Gen. Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez. The rest of the army would be spared, and likewise Perez Molina.

...

In the case of one of those threatened a man had offered him a bribe of one million US dollars as well as technical assistance with offshore accounts and laundering the funds. All the lawyer had to do was to agree to stop the Rios Montt case.

When that didn't work, the angle changed: the man put a pistol on the table and stated that he knew where to find the lawyer's children.

...


After the 1983 New Republic piece the Guatemalan army sent an emissary who invited me to lunch at a fancy hotel and politely told me that I would be killed unless I retracted the article. The army murdered Guatemalans all the time, but for a US journalist the threat rang hollow...

...

http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/breaking-news-genocide-trial-of-general.html

[Judi Lynn]

5. This background from Nairn is essential. He's in a dangerous spot right now, too.

It's good for the journalist he has important evidence on film from that time which has already been aired. He's got real courageous in not just ducking for cover!

From the 2nd link in the article immediately above:

Also see my piece in the April 17, 1995 The Nation, "C.I.A. Death Squad: Americans have been directly involved in Guatemalan Army killings." The piece reports on US sponsorship of the G-2, the Guatemalan military intelligence unit which picked targets for assassination and disappearance and often did its own killings and torture. The piece names Perez Molina as one of "three of the recent G-2 chiefs [who] have been paid by the C.I.A., according to U.S. and Guatemalan intelligence sources."

I'm not sure there's any place this man can really hide, anymore. My god. Being public about it should be beneficial, surely, involving the public as witnesses who can ask questions.

You may recall Jennifer Harbury, whose husband, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, was tortured for YEARS by the Guatemalan government, who would be badly injured, allowed to heal, then brutally injured all over again, and allowed to heal, etc,, etc., etc. said that he saw US American officers during his long ordeal of suffering at their hands. She found the final information about her husband with the cooperation, oddly enough, of New Jersey's now disgraced Senator Robert Torricelli. He helped her when no one else would bother.

(She has written a book with her friend, Diana Ortiz, and they have together and separately tried to awaken the U.S. public regarding torture in Guatemala. Here is a Democracy Now segment with Diana Ortiz, "Sister Dianna Ortiz Details Her Abduction and Torture by U.S.-Backed Guatemalan Military:"

http://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/12/sister_dianna_ortiz_details_her_abduction

[Catherina]

8. I had forgotten about her but you just brought it all flooding back

So many unforgivable atrocities.

And none of them make the Guatemalan press, except maybe with a brief, vague, passing mention buried on a back page.

By the way, have you ever heard Human Rights Watch complain about freedom of the press in Guatemala? There's absolutely none. It's so chilling that Left doesn't even try. Their section on Guatemala is laughable to the point of transparency.

Thanks for reminding us about Jennifer Harbury.

[naaman fletcher]

10. HRW

By the way, have you ever heard Human Rights Watch complain about freedom of the press in Guatemala? There's absolutely none


Attacks and threats against human rights defenders are common, significantly hampering human rights work throughout the country. Journalists, especially those covering corruption, drug trafficking, and accountability for abuses committed during the civil war, also face threats and attacks. Rolando Santiz, a reporter for the national television station Telecentro 13, was shot to death in Guatemala City on April 1. Antonio de León, a station cameraman, was injured in the attack.

http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2011/guatemala

[Bacchus4.0]

11. see what I mean? I smell chavista

Your catch is even a better example of a blatant lie and deception on the situation in Guatemala than the lie I caught.

[naaman fletcher]

12. I saw yours

One would think that someone who lives in Guatemala reads the newspapers.

[naaman fletcher]

7. What's the presumed story her?

Molina and crew were allowing the Montt trial (and remember Molina was part of the coup against Montt), but then during the trial Molina is accused of being Tito Arias, so they then shut it down and are scrambling to figure out how to avoid Molina getting caught up in the trial more than he has?

That makes sense, I just didn't know if there was another angle I am missing.

[Catherina]

3. "God is our attorney"

Where to go from here is the choice of the President, General Perez Molina, the institutional army and the death-squad oligarchs. It's a good bet that at this writing they have not yet reached a full decision.

On the one hand, by killing the case they get to revel in untouchability. They think they get to say, as their slogan goes, "In Guatemala there was no genocide," to hand out bumper stickers, like this morning, saying "I love the Guatemalan army," and to say, with Rios Montt's daughter, Zury: "God is our attorney."

...

In this case, the understanding all over Guatemala including inside the palace was that if Perez Molina allowed the hand-cleansing trial, the US -- at that time on Hillary Clinton's authority -- would respond with still more military/ "anti-terror"/ "anti-drug" aid.

The Americans thought they had a deal, but now they don't. Will the US just let it slide? They certainly might. For the US, the trial was just an ornament, something to point to and say, when needed: 'See? We're actually pro-human rights.'

...

... it was a nice cheap fillip, but now Perez Molina and co. have made things complicated.

http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/if-enough-forces-weigh-in-trial-can.html

[Judi Lynn]

6. Sickening. We'll find out how powerful the US feels if they let it dangle then disappear.

That would be a knife in the back to humanity, but it could also be an eye-opening show of power if they feel they can simply let it fade away before it's cleanly concluded.

[ocpagu]

9. That's so sick!

So many people, waiting for so much time to get some justice. And yet we have another Latin American supreme court advocating for impunity.

Rios Montt should not be allowed to get away with his criminal record.

Thanks for the info, Judi.

[Catherina]

13. Demonstrations, anger, tears, anger, anger....

Ixil indigenous people, survivors of the civil war, demonstrate outside the supreme court. Photograph: Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images


Indigenous Maya witness and testify at former Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt's genocide trial

[Judi Lynn]

15. These photos are so meaningful. No mistake possible in knowing how much it means

to finally see this monster, these monsters called out for their sins against humanity, against life.

I've heard the government, in its attempt to disintegrate the way of life of indigenous people has tried to force them to NOT wear their own native clothing, to force them to imitate the non-indigenous European people who have been taught to, or naturally by inherited spiritual ugliness, bear race hatred toward them.

Thanks, these photos are important. What a shame if the people will not be honored, finally, by giving them justice after all their suffering.

[idwiyo]

14. K&R