Ex-Guatemalan ruler found guilty of genocide (via AFP)
Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and war crimes in a landmark ruling stemming from massacres of indigenous people in his country’s long civil war. Rios Montt thus became the first Latin American ex-dictator convicted of trying to exterminate an entire group…
A little history:
It was George W’s father, George HW Bush, who welcomed the 1982 coup that brought Rios Montt to power with the declaration that this was “another step by Guatemala along the road to democracy.” Bush was Reagan’s vice president at the time. Reagan made similar statements.
Rios Montt’s coup overthrew a previous butcher, General Lucas Garcia; both those governments were installed by the US government, as had all Guatemalan dictatorships since the original 1954 US coup against the democratic government.
AND WE HAVE LEARNED NOTHING. obama DOING THE SAME DAMN THING IN LYBIA,SYRIA,YEMEN,PAKISTAN,AFGHAN.,…………….
Our government is the greatest killing machine the modern world has seen in a very long time.
Wow, this was the journalist I read yesterday, this happened over-night. Damn, if little bedraggled Guatamala can do it, why the hell can’t we?
Published on Saturday, May 11, 2013 by Allan Nairn
A Formal Legal Mandate for a Criminal Investigation of Guatemala’s Current President, Perez Molina
by Allan Nairn
In this Dec. 5, 2011 file photo, Guatemala’s President-elect Otto Perez Molina, center right, greets new members of Guatemala’s Army elite special forces, “Kaibiles,” at a graduation ceremony in Poptun, Guatemala. (AP)
General Efrain Rios Montt has been found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has already begun his “irrevocable” sentence of 80 years in prison.
The court that convicted Rios Montt has also ordered the attorney general to launch an immediate investigation of “all others” connected to the crimes.
This important and unexpected aspect of the verdict means that there now exists a formal legal mandate for a criminal investigation of the President of Guatemala, General Otto Perez Molina.
As President, Perez Molina enjoys temporary legal immunity, but that immunity does not block the prosecutors from starting their investigation.
Last night, in a live post-verdict interview on CNN Espanol TV, Perez Molina was confronted about his own role during the Rios Montt massacres.
The interviewer, Fernando del Rincon, repeatedly asked Perez Molina about his filmed interviews with me when he was Rios Montt’s Ixil field commander.
At that time, Perez Molina, operating under the alias “Major Tito Arias,” commanded troops who described to me how, under orders, they killed civilians.
At first, Perez Molina refused to answer, then CNN’s satellite link to him was cut off, then, after it was restored minutes later, Perez Molina replied that women, children and “complete families” had in fact aided guerrillas.
Offering what appears to be a rationale for killing families may not be a sufficient defense. But that is up to Perez Molina.
He too deserves his day in court.
© 2013 Allan Nairn
Thank you for posting this M. I did some reading, seems old Montt had a lot of help from Uncle Sam, in fact talk is that the current “President” of Guatamala was the CIA arm for Montt in “the day”. And may actually be brought up as well. Reagan was their “buddy”, read a quote from Reagan stating something like, “they’re all Commies anyway” about the indingenous(sp) people. They couldn’t be controlled and had to be exterminated. This is a huge deal for a South American Nation. Hope to hell we have a chance to prosecute our own war criminals, I’d volunteer for that jury.