The Guatemalan Trial: Is it too late for Justice to be Served?

By, Kaitlin Evans

Introduction

The trial has been in the news off and on for about sixteen years and now has some wondering if justice will ever be served. The guilty verdict and sentencing of

General Jose Efrain Rios Montt stood only ten days before being annulled based on a procedural issue. A new trial was restarted in January 2015 but was postponed days later because a judge was found to have formed an opinion and could not be impartial.1 These recent developments have the citizens of and people all over the world asking themselves if justice will ever be served for the 1,700 indigenous Mayans that were murdered in the early 1980s.2

The History of the Guatemalan Genocide Trials

When the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sponsored the overthrow of democratically elected leftist President in 1954 it started the longest regional civil war in Guatemala.3 The United States assisted in this overthrow because they saw Arbenz as a threat to commercial and security interests.4 The lasted from 1960 to

1996 and took more than 200,000 Guatemalan lives.5 After the overthrow of Arbenz, Colonel

Carlos Castillo took over in a coup.6

1 Mariano Castillo & Patzy Vasquez, Guatemala Genocide Trial Hits Hurdles at Outset, CNN (last updated Jan. 8, 2015, 1:33 PM), http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/06/americas/guatemala-genocide-trial/. 2 Id. 3 E. BRADFORD BURNS & JULIE A. CHARLIP, : A CONCISE INTERPRETIVE HISTORY 243 (7th ed. 2002). 4 THOMAS E. SKIDMORE & PETER H. SMITH, MODERN LATIN AMERICA 349-350 (5th ed. 2001). 5 Id. 6 Id. at 352. 1

Castillo was assassinated in 1957 and Guatemala was ruled by several different military leaders in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.7 Left-wing Guatemalan military officers failed to revolt in response to the Guatemalan government allowed the CIA to use Guatemalan territory to train Cuban exiles for use in the Bay of Pigs invasion.8 The Bay of Pigs invasion began when the CIA financed and trained a group of Cuban refugees who landed in and attempted to destroy the communist government of Fidel Castro. The rebels formed the Movimiento

Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre (MR-13) which later became the (Fuerzaz

Armadas Rebeldes or FAR), a combination of the MR-13 and the Guatemalan Labor Party

(Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo or PGT).9

The Guatemalan government launched counterinsurgency attacks against rebels throughout the country with the help of the United States government.10 The President of

Guatemala from 1966 to 1974 was Julio Cesar Mendez Mentenegro, who led the government campaign with brutal tactics, and the (“White Hand”), a paramilitary which targeted government dissidents.11 The revolutionaries viewed the guerillas as the last hope for redressing the economic and political marginalization of the indigenous communities.12

This created a conflict between guerilla insurgencies and the government that continued during the 1970’s and the guerilla groups united under the Revolutionary National Unity of Guatemala

7 Id. 8 BURNS & CHARLIP, supra note 2, at 301. 9 SUZANNE JONAS, THE BATTLE FOR GUATEMALA: REBELS, DEATH SQUADS AND U.S. POWER 66- 67 (1991). 10 Douglas Farah, Papers Show U.S. Role in Guatemalan Abuses, WASH. POST (Mar. 11, 1999), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/inatl/daily/march99/guatemalall.htm. “During the 1960s, the United States was intimately involved in equipping and training Guatemalan security forces that murdered thousands of civilians in the nation’s civil war, according to newly declassified U.S. intelligence documents.” 11 See Declassified Intelligence Note of U.S. Dep’t of State, Guatemala: A Counter- Insurgency Running Wild? (Oct. 23, 1967), http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB32/docs/doc05.pdf. 12 Guatemala: Silent Holocaust: The Mayan Genocide, CTR. FOR JUSTICE & ACCOUNTABILITY, http://www.cja.org/article.php?list=type&type=294. 2

(Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca or UNRG).13 The conflict radicalized in

1980s.14

Rios Montt became the leader of Guatemala in 1982 following a military coup.15 In April of 1982 Montt launched the National Plan of Security and Development (Plan Nacional de

Seguridad y Desarrollo or PNSD).16 Montt’s time in power was considered “the bloodiest period in Guatemala’s history”.17 During this time the government systematically raped, tortured, and murdered thousands of civilians and destroyed hundreds of villages,18 and a large majority of the civilians killed were indigenous Mayans.19 In 1983, Montt was finally pushed out of power and replaced by General Mejia Victores.20 Mejia Victores held elections for a Constituent Assembly and drafting a constitution.21 Victores also issued Decree 8-86, which granted amnesty for political crimes committed between 1982 and 1986 and therefore created issues when attempting to prosecute Montt.22 The Decree made it almost impossible for Montt to be charged for the crimes of genocide because it granted him amnesty, which meant he could not be punished for things that were under his control during his reign.

13 Quines Somos (“Who We Are”), UNIDAD REVOLUCIONARIA NACIONAL GUATEMALTECA [Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity, UNRG], http://www.urng-maiz.org.gt/quienesomos.html (last visited Jan. 6, 2015). 14 Greg Grandin, Politics by Other Means: Quatemala’s Quiet Genocide, in Quiet Genocide, Guatemala 1981-1883, at I, 9-10 (Etelle Higonnet ed., Marcie Mersky trans., 2009). 15 Timeline of Events: The Trail of Efrain Rios Montt & Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, OPEN SOC’Y JUST. INITIATIVE, http://www.riosMontttrial.org/trail-background/timeline-of-events/ [hereinafter Timeline: Rios Montt & Rodriguez Sanchez Trial]. 16 Timeline, Int’l Justice Monitor, http://www.ijmonitor.org/efrain-rios-montt-and-mauricio-rodriguez-sanchez- timeline/ (last visited Jan. 6, 2015). 17 Guatemala: Silent Holocaust: The Mayan Genocide, CTR. FOR JUST. & ACCOUNTABILITY, http://www.cja.org/article.php?list=type&type=294. 18 Id. 19 Id. 20 Timeline: Rois Montt & Rodriguez Sanchez Trial, supra note 15. 21 See Constructional Limits on Government: Country Studies - - Guatemala, DEMOCRACY WEB, http://www.democracyweb.org/limits/guatemala.php. 22 Timeline: Rios Montt & Rodriguez Sanchez Trial, supra note 15. 3

The End of the Guatemalan Civil War and the Beginning of The Genocide Trial.

The end of the Civil War was in 1996 with the signing of peace accords and the passage of the National Reconciliation Law.23 This law granted amnesty for many crimes committed during war, but explicitly excluded crimes of genocide.24 The U.N. sponsored truth commission published a report in 1999 which concluded that the Guatemalan state was responsible for committing acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people during Montt’s time in power.25

The first charges for genocide against Rios Montt and high-level Guatemalan officials were brought by a group led by indigenous Guatemalan Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu.26

This was known as the “Guatemala Genocide Case.” The charges were filed in domestic

Spanish Court under universal jurisdiction.27 In the Guatemala Genocide Case the trial judge ruled the Spanish court had jurisdiction on the basis of severity of the crimes alleged with the judge noting that several of the victims were Spanish or had died on Spanish territory.28 On appeal, the Supreme Court held that universal jurisdiction could not be exercised without a

“connecting nexus” to Spain and therefore that investigations could be pursued only into the charges of attacks against Spanish citizens and not into the genocide charges against indigenous

Mayans.29 The Spanish Constitutional Court reversed the Supreme Court’s decision, but was

23 Decreto No. 145, 27 December 1996, Ley de Reconciliacion Nacional [National Reconciliation Act], 54 Diario de Centro America (Guat.). 24 Id., at art. 8 (“The termination of criminal responsibility in this law will not apply to crimes of genocide”). 25 Comision Para El Exclarecimiento Historico [Comm’n for Historical Clarification, CEH], Guatemala: Memory of Silence, 122 (1994), available at http://shr.aaas.org/projects/human_rights.guatemala/ceh/mos_en.pdf (“The CEH concludes that agents of the State of Guatemala, within the framework of counterinsurgency operations carried out between 1981 and 1983, committed acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people.”). 26 Rigoberta Menchu et al. v. Rios Montt et al. (“Guatemala Genocide Case”), Complaint, ASSER INST. CENTER FOR INT’L AND EUROPEAN L., http://www.asser.nl/upload/documents/DomCLIC/Docs/NLP/Spain/Guatemala_Complaint_02-12-99.pdf (last visited Jan. 15, 2015). 27 Id. 28 Naomi Roht-Arriaza, International Decisions- - Guatemala Genocide Case, 100 AM. J. INT’L L. 207, 208 (2006) (noting that in 1980 the Spanish ambassador was injured and several embassy were burned to death in the firebombing attack on the Spanish Embassy in ). 29 Id. 4 interrupted by the Guatemalan Constitutional Court when the Court found that the Spanish

Court’s exercise of universal jurisdiction violated Guatemala’s sovereignty.30 Rios Montt avoided charges for years because of his political immunity as a Guatemalan Congressman.31

Montt’s immunity from prosecution lasted twelve years but was lifted on January 14, 2012.32 In

January of 2012, charges were brought against Montt alleging that he was responsible for ordering about 100 massacres that killed around 1,800 people.33 The trial was a quick and speedy trial with the conviction of Montt happening in May of 2012.34 The verdict was overturned ten days later based on procedural issues.35 The Constitutional Court struck the conviction and the sentence stating that Montt was denied due process.36

The Genocide Trial in Recent News

After the verdict was overturned on procedural grounds in 2013 it took nineteen months for a new trial to begin.37 And then, after just a few hours, the trial was suspended.38 Rios Montt is now too sick to attend trial but the three judge panel rejected the motion to delay and Montt eventually made his entrance, strapped on a gurney.39 The trial was suspended because of a judge’s impartiality.40 The judges agreed that the trial should be suspended until an appeals

30 Wolfgang Kaleck, From Pinochet to Rumsfeld: Universial Jurisdiction in Europe: 1998-2008, 30 MICH. J. INT’L L. 927, 956-57 (2009). 31 Guatemala Ex-Leader Rios Montt Faces Massacre Trial, BBC NEWS, (last updated May 22, 2012, 7:21 AM), http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18157517. 32 Id. 33 Guatemala Ex-Leader Rios Montt to Face Genocide Charge, BBC NEWS, (last updated Jan. 26, 2012, 11:45 PM), http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-16750880. 34 Jo- Marie Burt and Geoff Thale, The Guatemala Genocide Case: Using the Legal System to Defeat Justice, INT’L JUST. MONITOR, (June 11, 2013), http://www.ijmonitor.org/2013/06/jo-marie-burt-and-geoff-thale-the-guatemala- genocide-case-using-the-legal-system-to-defeat-justice/. 35 Mariano Castillo & Patzy Vasquez, Guatemala Genocide Trial Hits Hurdles at Outset, CNN (last updates Jan. 8, 2015, 1:33 PM ET), http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/06/americas/guatemala-genocide-trial/. 36 Guatemala Genocide Trial Rescheduled for 2015, AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, (Nov. 6, 2013 6:10 AM GMT). 37 Castillo & Vasquez, supra note 35. 38 Id. 39 Castillo & Vasquez, supra note 35. 40 Id. 5 court can name a new judge.41 To date the trial has not been resumed. Questions now arise as to if justice will ever be served now that Montt is older and suffering from sickness. I believe that justice will never be served for the people who lost their lives and families who lost loved ones during the tragic massacre. The United Nations should have acted more efficiently after the

Guatemalan Civil was over because now it is more probable that Montt will die before going through an entire trial and sentencing again.

In Conclusion, basic human rights and justice would be served by a conviction of Montt in the next year or so. This seems almost impossible because of the on-going delays and procedural errors. Justice may not ever be served against the victims of this horrific crime and it is time that the nations all stand up against this type of injustice.

41 Id. 6