Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 31. januar 2013 / Time Line January 31, 2013
Version 3.501/31/2013
Kvindesagsforkæmperen og pacifisten Ellen Hørups
fødselsdag, 1871.
01/31/2013
Guatemalan Genocide on Trial : Court case begins today against
former dictator Rios Montt
30-year struggle for justice leads to landmark prosecution
Washington, DC, January 31, 2013 - Guatemala achieved a
breakthrough for justice today with the opening of the landmark
criminal trial of Efrain Rios Montt, former military dictator, for
genocide and crimes against humanity. Rios Montt, along with his
chief of army intelligence Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, is
charged with ordering and overseeing a bloody counterinsurgency
campaign during his 1982-83 regime that sought to wipe out
guerrilla forces and anyone who supported them. The indictment
accuses the two retired generals of responsibility for fifteen
massacres in the Ixil region of the country's northwestern Quiche
department, resulting in the deaths of 1,771 unarmed men, women and
children.
The proceedings will begin with a review of the evidence by Judge
Miguel Angel Galvez. The prosecution plans to propose 142 witnesses
-- among them, relatives of victims and survivors of the massacres
-- and 64 experts, including military analysts, forensic
scientists, anthropologists, scholars, investigators and
psychologists. Documents will include military records,
counterinsurgency campaign plans, field reports sent from the
killing zones to the high command, and the findings of the
UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission, which in 1999
concluded that 200,000 civilians died or disappeared in the 36-year
conflict. The truth commission also found that Guatemalan army,
police, and paramilitary forces were responsible for 93 percent of
human rights violations committed during the war.
Rios Montt was indicted for genocide in January 2012, but a flood
of appeals, amnesty requests, and other delay tactics by the
defense prevented the case from advancing.
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