Genocide Retrial for Guatemalan Former Dictator

Genocide Retrial Is Set for Guatemalan Former Dictator

Elisabeth Malkin, New York Times

25 August 2015

Image: Former Guatemalan leader General José Efraín Rios Montt is currently facing trial for genocide during his time in office (Photo Credit: Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images).

MEXICO CITY — A Guatemalan court ruled on Tuesday that the former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt must face a new genocide trial in the persecution of the Maya Ixil Indians during his rule, but agreed to hold it behind closed doors because he has dementia.

The decision ends months of wrangling over the retired general’s mental state. He will not be required to attend the trial, but will be represented by his lawyers.

The panel of three judges set a new trial date for January, though appeals of their ruling were expected from both sides.

The first trial ended in May 2013 with a conviction after the court heard vivid testimony from survivors about the army’s brutal scorched-earth policy in the Mayan Highlands in 1982 and 1983. The court sentenced General Ríos Montt, who came to power in a 1982 coup, to 80 years in prison in connection with the killings of 1,771 people, including children.

Yet 10 days later, Guatemala’s constitutional court overturned the conviction on a technicality.

Over the next two years, conservative supporters of the former strongman quietly maneuvered to head off the retrial. The attorney general who had brought the genocide case was replaced; the chief judge in the first trial was briefly suspended, and the lead prosecutor faced legal complaints that barred him from traveling. Still, the prosecution proceeded.

The in-camera ruling means that reporters will not be allowed to cover the new trial, said Héctor Reyes, a lawyer at the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights who represents the Maya Ixil victims.

If the general, now 89, is convicted, the court would sentence him to detention at home or in a hospital.

Despite the general’s mental deterioration, a new trial is needed to “demonstrate the facts that serious human rights crimes were committed,” Mr. Reyes said.

“They cannot remain in impunity,” he added in a telephone interview.

The former dictator will be tried alongside his former intelligence chief, Gen. José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez. General Rodríguez, 70, was acquitted in the first genocide trial, in which he had been a co-defendant.

Prosecutors had asked for a separate retrial in open court for General Rodríguez. The ruling on Tuesday, however, meant that the proceedings against him would also be in camera.