Bail decision for accused war criminal delayed

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Canadian Press

Bail decision for accused war criminal delayed
The Canadian Press Posted: Feb 25, 2011 6:39 PM MT Last Updated: Feb 25, 2011 6:39 PM MT

A man accused of war crimes in Guatemala and facing extradition to the United States is a flight risk and should be denied bail, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice argued Friday. Jorge Vinicio Orantes Sosa, 52, has both Canadian and American citizenship and is charged in the U.S. with lying to get his papers.

~snip~
Sosa is accused of participating in a massacre in 1982 in a Guatemalan village where 251 men, women and children were killed.

~snip~
Sosa 'disappeared': U.S. lawyer
An arrest warrant for murder was issued in Guatemala years ago for Sosa. The U.S. indictment alleges he was the commanding officer of a patrol involved in attacks on the village of Las Dos Erres during the Guatemalan civil war and under the de facto presidency of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt.

"The special patrol proceeded to systematically kill the men, women and children at Dos Erres by, among other methods, hitting them in the head with a sledgehammer and throwing them into a well," reads the indictment.



Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/02/25/calgary-jorge-sosa-guatemala-war-crimes-bail-hearing.html

---

Earier story, arrested in Canada:

The Canadian Press
Date: Thursday Jan. 20, 2011 6:44 AM ET

http://images.ctv.ca.nyud.net:8090/archives/CTVNews/img2/20110120/470_terror_suspect2_1101202.jpg

CALGARY — Ottawa should review the criteria it uses to grant Canadian citizenship after a man accused of heinous war crimes in Guatemala nearly 30 years ago was arrested in Alberta this week, a former diplomat from the central American country said Wednesday.

Jorge Vinicio Orantes Sosa has both Canadian and American citizenship and is charged in the U.S. with making a false statement relating to naturalization and unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization. He was arrested in Lethbridge, Alta., on Tuesday while visiting relatives.

Sosa, 52, is also wanted by Guatemalan authorities for allegedly participating in attacks on a village in 1982 in which 251 men, women and children were massacred and faces extradition back to the United States.

"I think Canada has to take a tough stand on this. Enough of this business," said Carmen Aguilera, a Guatemalan lawyer and the country's former honorary consul in Calgary.

More:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110120/guatemala-lawyer-says-ottawa-should-review-citizenship-criteria-110120/

[rfranklin]

1. Next up....George Bush and Dick Cheney....

What do you mean, no prosecution for war crimes?

[Judi Lynn]

3. You may want to scan this: Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files

Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files

By Robert Parry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/052699a1.html

Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems. The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for the optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.

In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anticommunist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.

The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala. The one consistent element in these slaughters was the overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating in large part from Ronald Reagan's White House.

Yet, as the world community moves to punish war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, no substantive discussion has occurred in the United States about facing up to this horrendous record of the 1980s. Rather than a debate about Reagan as a potential war criminal, the ailing ex-president is honored as a conservative icon with his name attached to Washington National Airport and with an active legislative push to have his face carved into Mount Rushmore. When the national news media does briefly acknowledge the barbarities of the 1980s in Central America, it is in the context of one-day stories about the little countries bravely facing up to their violent pasts. At times, the CIA is fingered abstractly as a bad supporting actor in the violent dramas. But never does the national press lay blame on individual American officials.

More:
http://www.converge.org.nz/lac/articles/news990610b.htm

[rfranklin]

4. Yes, I remember...

I should have use the SARCARSM smiley.

[Peace Patriot]

5. The adulation of Reagan is one of the worst obscenities our corpo-fascist press.

:puke:

[Judi Lynn]

2. Arrested in Canada, a suspect in the slaughter of the Guatemalan town Las Dos Erres

Arrested in Canada, a suspect in the slaughter of the Guatemalan town Las Dos Erres

Todanoticia.com-Toronto (Canada), Jan. 18 .- The Canadian authorities arrested today in a small town west of the country to Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, a Guatemalan suspect in the slaughter of Las Dos Erres , which occurred in the Petén Guatemala in the early nineteen eighties.

Only one of the 252 inhabitants of Las Dos Erres massacre survived between 6 and 8 December 1982 in this community, located in the municipality of La Libertad.

A police spokesman in the town of Lethbridge in Alberta, where the arrest took place, told Efe the arrest of Sosa, 52 years old, but could not provide more details.

Local media reported that Sosa also has Canadian and American nationalities.

http://www.todanoticia.com/22719/detenido-canada-sospechoso-masacre-localidad/?lang=en

~~~~~
Page last updated at 15:43 GMT, Monday, 18 October 2010 16:43 UK
Timeline: Guatemala

~snip~
1839 - Guatemala becomes fully independent.

1844-65 - Guatemala ruled by conservative dictator Rafael Carrera.

1873-85 - Guatemala ruled by liberal President Justo Rufino Barrios, who modernises the country, develops the army and introduces coffee growing.

1931 - Jorge Ubico becomes president; his tenure is marked by repressive rule and then by an improvement in the country's finances.

1941 - Guatemala declares war on the Axis powers.

Social-democratic reforms

1944 - Juan Jose Arevalo becomes president following the overthrow of Ubico and introduces social-democratic reforms, including setting up a social security system and redistributing land to landless peasants.

1951 - Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman becomes president, continuing Arevalo's reforms.

1954 - Land reform stops with the accession to power of Colonel Carlos Castillo in a coup backed by the US and prompted by Arbenz's nationalisation of plantations of the United Fruit Company.

1963 - Colonel Enrique Peralta becomes president following the assassination of Castillo.

1966 - Civilian rule restored; Cesar Mendez elected president.

1970 - Military-backed Carlos Arena elected president.

Human rights violated

1970s - Military rulers embark on a programme to eliminate left-wingers, resulting in at least 50,000 deaths.

1976 - 27,000 people are killed and more than a million rendered homeless by earthquake.

1981 - Around 11,000 people are killed by death squads and soldiers in response to growing anti-government guerrilla activity.

1982 - General Efrain Rios Montt gains power following military coup.

1983 - Montt ousted in coup led by General Mejia Victores, who declares an amnesty for guerrillas.

1985 - Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo elected president and the Guatemalan Christian Democratic Party wins legislative elections under a new constitution.

1989 - Attempt to overthrow Cerezo fails; civil war toll since 1980 reaches 100,000 dead and 40,000 missing.

1991 - Jorge Serrano Elias elected president. Diplomatic relations restored with Belize, from whom Guatemala had long-standing territorial claims.

1993 - Serrano forced to resign after his attempt to impose an authoritarian regime ignites a wave of protests; Ramiro de Leon Carpio elected president by the legislature.

1994 - Peace talks between the government and rebels of the Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity begin; right-wing parties win a majority in legislative elections.

1995 - Rebels declare a ceasefire; UN and US criticise Guatemala for widespread human rights abuses.

End of civil war

1996 - Alvaro Arzu elected president, conducts purge of senior military officers and signs peace agreement with rebels, ending 36 years of civil war.

1998 - Bishop Juan Gerardi, a human rights campaigner, murdered.

1999 - UN-backed commission says security forces were behind 93% of all human rights atrocities committed during the civil war, which claimed 200,000 lives, and that senior officials had overseen 626 massacres in Maya villages.

~snip~
2004 May/June - Major cuts to the army; bases are closed and 10,000 soldiers are retired.

2004 July - $3.5 million in damages paid to victims of civil war. Move follows state's formal admissions of guilt in several well-known human rights crimes.

2004 September - Deadly clashes as police try to evict around 600 squatters from private farm. Eleven people are killed.

~snip~
2010 October - US apologises for deliberately infecting hundreds of Guatemalans with gonorrhoea and syphilis as part of medical tests in the 1940s. President Colom describes the tests as a "crime against humanity".

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1215811.stm