Warrants Issued for Ex-Guatemala Leaders (Pat Robertson friend,Rios Montt)

[Judi Lynn]

Warrants Issued for Ex-Guatemala Leaders
From Times Wire Reports
July 8, 2006


A Spanish judge has issued international warrants for the arrest of two former Guatemalan leaders on genocide charges.

National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued warrants on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention against Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores and six other men, according to a court statement.

The case stems from charges filed in Spanish courts in 1999 by Guatemalan Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu.
(snip/)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs8.2jul08,1,5889299.story?coll=la-headlines-world

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

July 7, 2006, 3:30PM
Spain Seeks 2 Former Guatemala Dictators


By HAROLD HECKLE Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

MADRID, Spain — A Spanish judge has charged two former Guatemalan dictators with genocide and issued international warrants for their arrest.

National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued warrants on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention against Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores and six other men, according to a court statement.

The case stems from charges of genocide, torture and murder filed in Spanish courts in 1999 by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchu.

Human rights groups say Rios Montt and Meijia are responsible for some of the worst atrocities of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which left 200,000 people dead before peace accords in December 1996.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4031708.html



Mayan Indians carry the coffins of the victims of a 1982
massacre, in a remote village called Xiquin Sanahi,
Comalapa, 73 km southeast of Guatemala City, during 36
years of Guatemalan civil war, Thursday, June 5, 2003.

(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)


The bodies of 66 people were exhumed from at least six different mass grave sites.


(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)


A campaign poster of Guatemalan
Republican Front leader Jose Efrain
Rios Montt is splattered with red paint.
Picture: Reuters

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September 17 / 18, 2005

Demeaner of the Faith
Rev. Pat Robertson and Gen. Rios Montt
By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

While Pat Robertson's recent remarks on the Christian Broadcast Network's The 700 Club that the United States should "take out" Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez certainly caught the media spotlight, the statement by the evangelical minister was only the latest episode in a long and troubled story. Since the 1970s Robertson has loyally served hawkish U.S. foreign policy objectives in Latin America and played a particularly pernicious role in the region. Christian organizations nation wide would do well to heed the history and to rigorously challenge Robertson on his record.
(snip)

......When Rios Montt took power in a military coup d'etat in March of 1982, Robertson immediately flew to Guatemala, meeting with the incoming president a scant five days after he came to power. Later, Robertson aired an interview with Rios Montt on "The 700 Club" and extolled the new military government.

Robertson's visit came at a particularly sensitive time. Guatemala's dirt poor indigenous peoples, who made up half the country's population, were suffering greatly at the hands of the U.S. funded military. The armed forces had taken over Indian lands that seemed fertile for cattle exporting or a promising site to drill for oil. Those Indians who dared to resist were massacred. Rios Montt, a staunch anti-Communist supported by U.S. president Reagan, was determined to wipe out the Marxist URNG, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union rebels. However, according to Amnesty International, thousands of people with no connection to the armed struggle were killed by the regime. Not surprisingly, many Indians turned to armed resistance. To deal with the ever worsening situation, Rios Montt proposed a so called "guns and beans" campaign. Rios Montt explained the plan very succinctly: "If you are with us, we'll feed you, if not, we'll kill you." For Robertson, however, Rios Montt's extermination policy was of little account. Astonishingly, the televangelist wrote "I found to be a man of humilityimpeccable personal integrity, and a deep faith in Jesus Christ."

One reason that Rios Montt may have appealed to Robertson was the dictator's dislike of Catholic priests. In the 1980s, they had become an obstacle to the expansion of evangelical Protestantism. Working within indigenous communities, Catholic priests had been driven out or murdered. Protestant sects, on the other hand, allied to the Guatemalan military. They preached individual conversion, the importance of obedience to military and political authority, the merits of capitalism, and the value of inequality. Rios Montt's own Church of the Word went so far as to define priests and nuns as the enemy. According to Walter LaFeber, a historian of Central America, three priests were killed within a thirty-six month period in just one province. With the Catholic Church out of the way, Rios Montt conducted a scorched earth policy. His forces massacred as many as 15,000 Indians. Whole villages were leveled and the army set up "Civilian Self-Defense Patrols" which forced 900,000 villagers to "voluntarily" aid police in tracking down suspects. Rios Montt created "model" villages, similar to concentration camps, which housed Indian refugees. However, when 40,000 survivors sought safety in Mexico, Guatemalan helicopters machine gunned the camps. Rios Montt justified the genocidal policy by claiming that the Indians were suspected of cooperating with the URNG, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union, or "might" cooperate in future. Amnesty International noted that extra judicial killings carried out the by the military "were done in terrible ways: people of all ages were not only shot to death, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disemboweled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death."

Far from denouncing such practices, Robertson rushed to defend Rios Montt. "Little by little the miracle began to unfold," he wrote of the regime. "The country was stabilized. Democratic processes, never a reality in Guatemala, began to be put into place." Robertson also praised Rios Montt for eliminating death squads, despite recent estimates that tens of thousands were killed by death squads in the second half of 1982 and throughout 1983. Most damning of all, even as Rios Montt was carrying out the extermination of the Mayan population, Robertson held a fundraising telethon for the Guatemalan military. The televangelist urged donations for International Love Lift, Rios Montt's relief program linked to Gospel Outreach, the dictator's U.S. church. Meanwhile, Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network reportedly sponsored a campaign to provide money as well as agricultural and medical technicians to aid in the design of Rios Montt's first model villages. Rios Montt was ultimately overthrown in another military coup d'etat in August 1983.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff09172005.html

[Joanne98]

1. And they're all Bushco members. Give them the death penalty.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter into the kingdom

of heaven" seems like an apt quotation here.

[Greeby]

3. Worth noting that his daughter is married to a House Repuke

Jerry Weller of Illinois 11th: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Weller

If you're interested, his Dem challenger is John Pavich who joined the CIA for two years after 9/11 but left claiming the agency was being politicized: http://pavichforcongress.com/ Another addition to the 30-Something Work Group?

[nealmhughes]

4. Good Lord! That guy is a poster child of Republican values...

Duke, Enron, Anerson... four marriages for the wife....
Where are the real culprits: Eliot Abrams, Wolfowitz and Negroponte?

[Judi Lynn]

5. This is a lot to take in at once. Simply amazing.

From the wikipedia link:

The marriage has raised local and national controversy, as Ríos Montt's father is a former dictator, accused of genocide General Efraín Ríos Montt, whose 18-month term in office was characterized by a scorched earth policy that some observers believe to have amounted to many thousands of deaths the country's indigenous Maya people. {2} The U.S. State Department calculates the death toll under the Ríos Montt presidency at about 200,000. {3} Entire generations of families were killed. Zury Ríos Montt has called her father "her inspiration". {4}

This has caused concern among many 11th district voters, {5} who have asked that Weller make a public statement renouncing General Ríos Montt's past actions, and those of his wife. Some voters in Weller's district have also asked that he step down from his seat on the International Relations Committee, because of his marriage to a foreign legislator. His Committee seat requires that he oversee all of the Americas, including Guatemala.
(snip)

This is horrid. Goddawful.

It would seem his challenger, John Pavich HAS to be so much cleaner. Weller looks dirty. Hope Pavich has a chance to win. He'd be much better as a Congressman anyone should want in there.

[NorthernSun]

6. About time

You can bet Montt is hiding somewhere in the US living like a King. He will be protected by Negroponte just like the Cuban terrorists in Miami who brought down a planeload of 73 civilians.

[struggle4progress]

7. kick

:kick:

[SoCalDem]

8. Ole Pat hangs with a rough crown.. remember Charles Taylor?

For a man of gawwwwd , he sure cast his lot with some thieves:)