Ex-dictator convicted of genocide in Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Former dictator Efrain Rios Montt's conviction of genocide is a historic moment in a country still healing from a brutal, three-decade civil war and his trial offered Guatemala's oppressed indigenous communities their first chance to be heard, human rights activists said.

Relatives of those killed and activists celebrated the 80-year sentence handed down by a tribunal to Rios Montt on Friday, a sweet moment in their long struggle to punish the former dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest chapters of a war that killed some 200,000 people, mainly indigenous Mayans.

During the trial Ixil Mayans, who have long suffered discrimination, stood up and testified about mass rapes, the killings of women and children, and other atrocities that authorities had often denied took place.

"It's important that victims were given a voice, that they were given an opportunity to be heard, to feel vindicated, to show they are not crazy and that what they went through did happen," said human rights activist Helen Mack, whose sister Mirna was killed in 1990 while documenting abuses against indigenous communities during the war.

"It's a painful process for Guatemala but we need go through it if we want to heal our wounds as a society," said Mack.

But she warned that it remains to be seen if justice will be served in the case, despite the conviction of the 86-year-old ex-general for genocide and crimes against humanity.

"This sentence is still not firm because Rios Montt's lawyers have already said they will work to nullify it," she added.

The ruling was the state's first official acknowledgment that genocide occurred during the 36-year civil war that ended with peace accords in 1996. It was also the first time such a sentence for genocide was ever handed down against a former Latin American leader in his own country.

For Guatemalan Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu the unprecedented trial was an opportunity for Ixil Mayans to show other indigenous communities how to exercise their rights.

"This was achieved by the Ixil people. This could mean that everyone, all indigenous people all over the planet who have been treated with hatred, who have been branded as liars, could hopefully start living in harmony," Menchu said.

When the guilty verdict was announced, the crowded courtroom erupted in cheers. Some women who lost relatives in the massacres wept.

Indians from ethnic Mayan groups broke into song after the verdict, singing "We only want to be human beings ... to live life, not die it."

"This is a verdict that is just. This brings justice for the victims, justice for the people of Guatemala," said Edgar Perez of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, one of the groups that originally brought the criminal complaint against the ex-dictator a dozen years ago.

"Judge, Judge! Restore order!" Rios Montt shouted as cameramen and photographers swarmed him after the verdict was announced.

In delivering the verdict by the three-judge tribunal, Presiding Judge Yassmin Barrios said "he knew about everything that was going on and he did not stop it, despite having the power to stop it from being carried out."

The proceedings suffered ups and downs as the trial was suspended for 12 days amid appeals and at times appeared headed for annulment.

Prosecutors argued that Rios Montt must have had knowledge of the massacres of Mayan Indians when he ruled Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983. The three-judge panel essentially concluded that the massacres followed the same pattern, showing they had been planned, something that would not be possible without the approval of the military command, which Rios Montt headed.

Rios Montt had said he never knew of or ordered the massacres while in power. A co-defendant, Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, a 68-year-old former general who was a high-ranking member of the military chiefs of staff during Rios Montt's administration, was acquitted.

The 80-year sentence was somewhat symbolic, given Rios Montt's age and the fact that Guatemala's maximum sentence is 50 years. His lawyers vowed to appeal the ruling.

"This is an unjust verdict. We already knew they were going to convict him, the general (Rios Montt) even came with his suitcase packed," said defense lawyer Francisco Palomo.

Dozens of victims testified of atrocities. A former soldier directly accused President Perez Molina of ordering pillaging and executions while serving in the military during the Rios Montt regime. Perez Molina called the testimony "lies."

Rios Montt seized power in a March 23, 1982, coup, and ruled until he himself was overthrown just over a year later. Prosecutors say that while in power he was aware of, and thus responsible for, the slaughter by subordinates of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayas in San Juan Cotzal, San Gaspar Chajul and Santa Maria Nebaj, towns in the Quiche department of Guatemala's western highlands.

Those military offensives were part of a brutal, decades-long counterinsurgency against a leftist uprising that brought massacres in the Mayan heartland where the guerrillas were based.

A U.N. truth commission said state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93 percent of the killings and human rights violations that it documented, committed mostly against indigenous Maya. Yet until now, only low or middle-level officials have been prosecuted for war atrocities.

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Associated Press Writer Olga R. Rodriguez contributed to this report

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Developments in Guatemala trial of Rios Montt

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — In 1999: Guatemalan non-governmental organization Association for Justice and Reconciliation files a complaint against army officials, including former Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, saying they're responsible for killings of thousands of Ixil Mayans during country's 36-year civil war. Victims try for years without success to get courts to act against military officers.

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In 2010: Guatemala's Supreme Court creates "high-risk courts" to try genocide, crimes against humanity, organized crime, other high profile crimes.

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In 2011: Attorney General's office asks Supreme Court to transfer complaint against army officers to newly created "high-risk courts." Guatemala's top court agrees.

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September 2011: Judge Carol Patricia Flores charges retired generals Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez and Luis Enrique Mendoza with genocide. Rios Montt, their former superior, is also accused but cannot be charged because he has immunity from prosecution as congressman.

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November 2011: Lopez Fuentes' defense asks that Judge Flores recuse herself from case, claiming she is biased against him. Judge ignores petition and continues case. Defense files an appeal with another court.

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January 2012: Rios Montt loses immunity after his term as congressman ends. That same month, he is called by Judge Flores to testify is charged with genocide. He posts $80,000 bail to continue process outside prison.

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February 2012: An appeals court rules for Lopez Fuentes' defense and asks Judge Flores to recuse herself from case, which is transferred to Judge Miguel Angel Galvez Aguilar.

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January 2013: After case is delayed by hundreds of defense appeals, Judge Galvez orders Rios Montt to stand trial and sends case to a three-member tribunal comprised of Judge Yassmin Barrios as president, and Judges Pablo Xitumul and Patricia Bustamante.

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February 2013: Rios Montt's defense wins an appeal to add evidence to case. Appeals court never informs Judge Galvez of resolution.

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March 13, 2013: An appeals court rules Judge Flores should take over case but she's never informed of resolution.

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March 19, 2013: Trial against Rios Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez begins.

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April 3, 2013: Constitutional Court orders Judge Galvez to add new evidence in case, saying Rios Montt's defense won an appeal. Galvez says he's no longer in charge of case because an appeals court ordered Judge Flores to take it.

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April 9, 2013: Constitutional Court, ruling on appeal by Rios Montt's defense, orders Judge Barrios to send case to Judge Flores so she can incorporate new evidence.

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April 18, 2012: Judge Flores announces case should go back to where it was in November 2011, before Rios Montt was charged with genocide.

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April 19, 2013: Tribunal in charge of Rios Montt's trial suspends trial and asks Constitutional Court to decide whether it should continue.

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April 22, 2013: Constitutional Court again orders Judge Flores to add new evidence in case.

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April 26, 2013: Judge Flores incorporates new evidence and sends case back to tribunal.

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April 30, 2013: Genocide trial against Rios Montt resumes after 12-day suspension amid appeals.

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May 7, 2013: Closing arguments begin.

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May 9, 2013: Rios Montt testifies for first time during closing arguments, avoiding being questioned by prosecutors and declaring himself innocent.

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May 10, 2013: Three-judge panel finds Rios-Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.

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Prison for ex-dictator soothes Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt spent his first full day as a convict Saturday in a 16-by-13 foot cell with a small bed, bathroom and window, after receiving a landmark 80-year sentence for genocide and crime against humanity.

It was a steep fall for the now-86-year-old former strongman who ruled Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983, during the height of a brutal civil war that killed 200,000 people, mainly Indians.

A tribunal on Friday ruled that Rios Montt knew about the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil Maya in Guatemala's western highlands and didn't stop it, handing down the first genocide conviction ever given to a Latin American strongman in his own country.

The former general was transferred to prison later that evening.

"He is not comfortable, but as a good soldier he is used to this," said Rios Montt's lawyer, Francisco Palomo, who is expected to seek to have the ex-general transferred to a hospital or to have his sentence be served under house arrest.

Matamoros prison, where Rios Montt is now behind bars, is located on a military base in Guatemala City where the former general spent time as a young cadet. It was built to house high-profile inmates who could be unsafe in normal prisons.

Authorities there say he has the right to spend two hours outside his cell each day, but guarded by officers. He has the right to three daily meals, though family members can also bring him food.

Most in Guatemala feel the sentence prison represents a triumph after a long struggle in a country still recovering from a 36-year-civil war that ended with peace accords in 1996.

"It's very valuable to us, totally refreshing. We deserved it," said human rights activist Helen Mack.

Genocidal massacres occurred before and after Rios Montt, "but the bulk of the killing took place under Rios Montt," said Victoria Sanford an anthropologist at Lehman College, City University of New York who has spent about 50 months in Guatemala and participated in excavations in at least eight massacre sites.

The long sentence was a message, activists said, that the previously untouchable and brutal military structures need to be held accountable. Guatemala's maximum sentence is 50 years making the 80 years symbolic.

The three-judge panel also ordered prosecutors to continue investigating to bring all those responsible for abuses to justice. Until now, only low or middle-level officials have been prosecuted for war atrocities.

On Monday, the same court will meet to discuss the compensation for the victims.

Indians and activists applauded and some wept after hearing Friday's ruling. But some are wondering if Rios Montt can successfully appeal.

Adding to their worries is the fact that Guatemala's current president, Otto Perez Molina, still refuses to acknowledge that genocide took place.

"It is painful to hear that some are in a state of denial, but admitting it is the first step for the country to heal," Mack said. "It is not over."

Perez Molina's name was brought up during the trial when a former soldier accused him of ordering executions while serving in the military in the Rios Montt regime.

He called the testimony "lies."

In a late Friday interview, Perez Molina told CNN's Spanish-language channel that there was no genocide, despite the ruling being seen as the country's first official acknowledgement that one took place.

"When I said that Guatemala has seen no genocide, I repeat it now after this ruling," Perez Molina said. "Today's ruling is not final ... the decision will not be final until the moment they run out of appeals."

Defense lawyer Francisco Palomo vowed to appeal the ruling, saying it was unjust.

Rios Montt has insisted he never knew of or ordered massacres while in power.

He began his career in the Guatemalan army in 1946 as a cadet. He seized power in March of 1982 through a military coup, and held it for 18 months until he was overthrown.

Ricardo Mendez Ruiz, a Guatemala businessman and son of a military officer, called the trial biased.

"We have found out the Ixiles' side of the story, not the whole truth," he said. "We want to rise up to show the world that this decision is not hailed by everyone in Guatemala."

In Rios Montt's trial, dozens of Ixil Mayas stood up and testified of atrocities, such as mass rapes and killing of children by the military.

Perez Molina said the army was not at fault.

"It was an armed conflict that was internal. The army did not cause this armed confrontation. The army did not declare war on the places where the Ixiles lived. The guerrilla did it," he said.

Military offensives were part of a brutal, decades-long counterinsurgency against a leftist uprising that brought massacres in the Mayan heartland where the guerrillas were based. A U.N. truth commission said both state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93 percent of the killings and human rights violations that it documented.

Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu says Guatemala's moment strengthens the world's powerless. Ixil Mayas, she said, can teach other oppressed groups around the world to stand by their rights and not to rest until tyrants are punished by law.

"This could mean that everyone, all indigenous people all over the planet who have been treated with hatred, who have been branded as liars, could hopefully start living in harmony," Menchu said.

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Associated Press writer Olga R. Rodriguez and John Rice contributed to this report from Mexico City.

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Guatemala cracks down on anti-mine protests

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — The Guatemalan government declared a state of emergency and banned public gatherings Thursday in four townships east of the capital following several days of violent clashes between police and anti-mining protesters.

The confrontations, which included mine security guards, have left one policeman dead, six residents wounded by rubber bullets, and police cars burned. Twenty-three police officers were briefly held by protesters before they were rescued.

The government sent in hundreds of police officers and soldiers, some in armored personnel vehicles. The government says the protesters are armed with guns and explosives.

Residents of the area, mainly members of the Xinca indigenous group, claim the mine threatens their local water sources.

"Investigations have found that a number of crimes have been committed, including homicide, kidnapping, the destruction of government property," said President Otto Perez Molina. He said ten arrests have been carried out so far "based on arrest warrants issued days ago against suspects in killings and kidnappings."

Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said Thursday police and soldiers were dispatched to all four towns, but did specify how many. The emergency decree allows the government to temporarily make detentions, conduct searches and question suspects outside the normal legal framework.

The clashes began over the weekend as residents held a series of protests at the Canadian-owned Escobal silver mine, known locally as the San Rafael mine, about 40 miles (70 kilometers) east of Guatemala City.

The mine's owner, Vancouver, British Columbia-based Tahoe Resources Inc., said protesters armed with machetes "turned hostile" at the gate on Saturday, and security guards fired tear gas and rubber bullets to ensure the security of mine personnel. Six protesters were wounded by rubber bullets.

Other protesters temporarily detained 23 police officers, seizing their firearms before releasing them. Later, in a nearby town, another officer was shot and killed in a confrontation possibly related to the mine clashes.

Residents have said they fear the underground mine will dry up local springs and other water sources. The mine has received permits to operate but is not yet operating.

Ira Gostin, vice president of investor relations for Tahoe Resources, said complaints that the mine could affect the springs "are totally unfounded."

The emergency decree covers the townships of Jalapa, Mataquescuintla, Casillas and San Rafael Las Rosas.

Yuri Melini, the director of the Legal Action Center for Human Rights, said "we believe that if crimes have been committed, they should be prosecuted, but the community's legitimate right to oppose the mine should not be criminalized."

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Guatemala war trial puts past closer to president

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala's struggle to deal with the war crimes of the past, including bringing an aging former dictator and his officers to justice, has taken a sharp turn to the present.

A mechanic testifying at the genocide trial of ex-strongman Efrain Rios Montt, now 86, became the first person to directly accuse current President Otto Perez Molina of ordering pillaging and executions in the 36-year civil war, which killed a total of 200,000, mostly indigenous Maya.

Such rumors and accusations had surfaced about Perez before, but without proof or formal charges. He has called Thursday's testimony "lies."

But the national talk continued Monday, four days after Hugo Reyes told a stunned courtroom: "The soldiers, on orders from Major 'Tito Arias,' better known as Otto Perez Molina ... coordinated the burning and looting, in order to later execute people."

Prosecutor Orlando Lopez said Reyes' testimony is 100 percent credible, but he has to study the accusations before he can say whether they would result in criminal action against Perez.

"Right now I'm focused on the Rios Montt case," Lopez said Monday. "I don't know what will happen after that."

Perez said he researched Reyes' record with the Defense Ministry and the mechanic wasn't in Nebaj, the base in western Quiche state where soldiers operated at the same time as Perez.

"I have nothing to hide. I did not participate in a single situation where someone died that was my responsibility," Perez told reporters on Friday. "I'm not going to deny that I was in Nebaj; it's true. But I was there to rescue the civilians, combat the armed guerrillas and help the civilians."

The testimony is shaking up Guatemala's attempts to settle its past. A U.N. truth commission said state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93 percent of the killings and human rights violations that it documented. Yet until now, only low or middle-level officials have been prosecuted for a war that ended in 1996.

Rios Montt is the biggest by far, on trial along with his former head of intelligence, Jose Sanchez, in connection with the deaths of 1,771 Mayan Indians during the military dictatorship he headed from March 23, 1982, to Aug. 8, 1983, during which he led a U.S.-backed counterinsurgency against guerrillas.

Perez, who retired as a general, made his military career as an intelligence specialist, one of the most influential sections of the army. He helped negotiate the 1996 peace accords and emerged as one of the moderate military leaders. He easily won the presidency in late 2011 from voters tired of the lack of law and order in a country run by gangs and drug traffickers, and has long insisted there was no genocide.

His election more than a year ago was criticized at the time as a return to the military rule of Guatemala's past. But Perez has since been credited with not standing in the way of efforts to prosecute accused leaders such as Rios Montt, the first former president in Latin America to be tried on genocide charges.

But now the testimony is leading to him.

"This is the second time the name of Otto Perez Molina has come up in the courts," Guatemalan Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu said Monday, noting that the first time was in a Spanish National Court in another case against Rios Montt. "It's important that the courts see all the evidence, judge the reality and determine what happened ... that the executive branch doesn't interfere just because the president is linked to the process."

Reyes, 47, who says he was a mechanic in an engineering brigade in the area where atrocities were carried out, told the court that Perez, then an army major, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage during Guatemala's war with leftist guerrillas in the 1980s.

He said he knew the top commanders because of his work in maintenance in Nebaj.

Perez wrote in a 2000 opinion piece for the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre that he used the nickname "Tito."

He wrote in that column that as a major he arrived in Nebaj in 1982 and spent nearly a year there, "an experience that left an inerasable fingerprint on my personal and professional life." Perez said he was the commander of a team fighting in the Ixil Triangle as part of the Task Force Gumarkaaj.

According to prosecutors, the task force acted on plans set out by military leadership that included orders to attack and remove "noncombatant civilian populations." Court documents say that all Maya Ixil were declared internal enemies.

Perez is also named in documents pertaining to "Operation Sofia," a report from the field to military superiors about soldiers' actions at the time. His name is handwritten on one page. The Rios Montt defense has said the documents are not original and therefore not valid.

The Defense Ministry said that during Rios Montt's government, Perez was an outstanding staff officer at a military institute and a battalion commander in an entirely different part of the country.

Reyes testified that soldiers tortured and executed the Ixil believed to be guerrillas. He said that women, children and the elderly were among the executed. He claimed that sometimes the soldiers would throw the victims' babies alive into the mass graves and bury them with their dead mothers.

Dozens of victims have testified since the trial started March 19 of surviving rapes, massacres and other atrocities.

The military offensives were part of a brutal, decades-long counterinsurgency against a leftist uprising that brought massacres in the Mayan heartland where the guerrillas were based.

The Rios Montt trial already is transcendental for Guatemala, said Marcie Mersky, director of the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice.

"This is the first time we have encountered a genuine trial under due process of international law," said Mersky, who is attending the trial.

Guatemalan human rights activist Helen Mack said people need to keep in mind that this trial is against Rios Montt.

"But new information has come out, and the court needs to determine if there is sufficient evidence to open an investigation," Mack said. "They have to determine where Otto Perez Molina was in the chain of command to determine if he was effectively responsible."

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Call for justice opens Guatemala ex-leader trial

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — The trial of Guatemala's former U.S.-backed dictator will offer the victims of the country's decades-long civil war the chance to tell the truth about the devastating conflict, the lawyer for the victims said Tuesday.

Gen. Efrain Rios Montt sat facing a group of victims and their families as his trial opened in a Guatemala City courtroom. His daughter, Zury Rios, sat in the first row, two seats from Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, who was there in support of the victims.

Rios Montt is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflict between the right-wing government and leftist guerrillas, a civil war that left some 200,000 people dead.

"Through this trial the victims can tell you their story, the truth that they've carried for more than 30 years, truth that some officials today want to deny," victims' lawyer Edgar Perez told the judges who will rule on the case.

Moments before the trial began, Rios Montt's legal team quit and was replaced by a new attorney, who filed a series of unsuccessful motions attempting to block the trial on procedural grounds.

Prosecutors acknowledge that there is no smoking gun in the case files, no direct order from Guatemala's then-military dictator to carry out the slaughter of civilians during one of the bloodiest phases of the country's long civil war.

In its absence, prosecutors hope to painstakingly prove through a detailed recreation of the military chain of command that Rios Montt must have had knowledge of the massacres of Ixil Mayan Indians and others in the Guatemalan highlands. Because he held absolute power over the U.S.-backed military government, his failure to stop the slaughter is proof of his guilt, prosecutors and lawyers for victims say.

"No one ever heard a speech in which he said, 'Kill the Ixils, exterminate the Ixils.' Jose Efrain Rios Montt never gave a written or verbal order to exterminate the Ixils in this country," defense attorney Francisco Garcia Gudiel told the court.

Rios Montt seized power in a March 23, 1982 coup, and ruled until he himself was overthrown just over a year later. Prosecutors say that while in power he was aware of, and thus responsible for, the slaughter by subordinates of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayas in San Juan Cotzal, San Gaspar Chajul and Santa Maria Nebaj, towns in the Quiche department of Guatemala's western highlands.

Those military offensives were part of a brutal, decades-long counterinsurgency against a leftist uprising that brought massacres in the Mayan heartland where the guerrillas were based.

Being tried with Rios Montt is Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, 68, a former high-ranking member of the military chiefs of staff.

On Tuesday morning, indigenous activists protested outside in support of the victims. Showing support for the accused outside the court were former members of government-backed paramilitary groups blamed for many of the killings.

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Guatemala: Probing reports drug lord may be dead

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan authorities are mobilizing security forces to scour a remote, rural area where residents reported a gunbattle between drug gangs and said one of the dead resembled Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

But officials stressed late Thursday that they had not yet found any bodies or even confirmed a shootout happened.

Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla told The Associated Press that police and soldiers would begin searching on foot and in the air at first light Friday, looking for the scene of the reported gunfight in Peten province near the border with Mexico.

Authorities initially said Thursday night that they were investigating whether Guzman was one of at least two men killed in the remote area, but hours later backtracked and said they had only received reports of a battle from local people.

Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas first told Guatevision Television that two drug gangs had clashed in Peten, an area that has seen an increase in drug violence and that at least two men had died in the shootout.

"We have to wait for all the technical information in order to determine if, in fact, one of the dead is of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman," Cuevas said.

Later, Cuevas told Mexico's Televisa network that authorities hadn't yet found a body or the scene where reports said a shootout took place.

He never said what led officials to think that one of the dead men might be Guzman.

But Interior Department spokeswoman Carla Herrera told The Associated Press that one of the victims physically resembled the drug lord. She said officials had asked the Mexican government to send Guzman's fingerprints to compare them to the man found inside a vehicle and to send investigators.

However, Herrera's boss, Lopez Bonilla, told the AP that it was residents of the town of San Francisco who had told officials of a gunbattle and reported that one of the people killed looked like Guzman.

"The fact is we don't have any of this information confirmed," Lopez Bonilla said.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said late Thursday that he had no information on the case.

"I don't have any information that can confirm that," he told reporters.

Peten province is an isolated area of jungle and ranches where 27 ranch workers were massacred in 2011 by the Zetas drug gang, a top rival for Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel.

Guzman, who has been in hiding since escaping from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart in 2001, is one of the world's most dangerous and most wanted fugitives.

He's also one of the richest: Forbes magazine has estimated his fortune at $1 billion.

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