Weekly Report - 31 January 2013 (WR-13-04)

GUATEMALA | Ríos Montt to stand trial. In what human rights groups are hailing as a breakthrough in efforts to redress past military impunity, a Guatemalan judge, Miguel Ángel Gálvez, ruled on 28 January that former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), and his former head of military intelligence, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, will stand trial for genocide and war crimes committed during the 1960-1996 civil war. The Washington Office on Latin America was among various human rights organisations to hail the ruling, describing it as “historic for a number of reasons, most notably because Ríos Montt’s trial will be the first for genocide related to the Guatemalan internal armed conflict.” The ruling is particularly significant given concerns that the government of President Otto Pérez Molina, himself a former head of military intelligence, was seeking to delay efforts to bring his former colleagues to justice. Ríos Montt is formally accused of ordering 15 massacres in three neighbouring towns in the department of Quiche in 1982-1983, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,700 indigenous Ixil people. First indicted a year ago, [WR-12-05] his legal team has since tried to stall the process with several appeals. Still pending is a ruling by the constitutional court (CC) on the legality of an amnesty law, which Ríos Montt has previously invoked to block attempts to bring him to trial.

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