Guatamala's Chickens Coming Home To Roost
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
Some members of Ronald Reagan's Latin American death squads finally getting their just-deserts:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ma ... -dos-erres
Guatemalan ex-soldier jailed for 6,060 years over Dos Erres massacre
Pedro Pimentel Rios is fifth member of elite military force to be imprisoned for role in killings of 201 people in 1982
Agencies in Guatemala City
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 March 2012
A former Guatemalan special forces soldier has been sentenced to 6,060 years in prison for his role in the killings of 201 people in a 1982 massacre.
Pedro Pimentel Rios was the fifth member of the elite military force to be sentenced to 6,060 years or more for what became known as the Dos Erres massacre after the killings in the northern Guatemala village during the 1960-96 civil war.
The sentence handed down by a three-judge panel is largely symbolic since under Guatemalan law the maximum time a prisoner can serve is 50 years. It specified 30 years for each of the 201 deaths, plus 30 years for crimes against humanity.
Pimentel Rios, 54, is a former instructor at a training school for the military force known as the Kaibiles. He lived in Santa Ana, California, and worked in a clothing factory for years until being detained by immigration authorities in May 2010. He was extradited to Guatemala last year.
The civil war claimed at least 200,000 lives, with the country's US-backed army being responsible for most of the deaths, according to the findings of a truth commission.
In December 1982, several dozen soldiers stormed Dos Erres, searched homes for missing weapons and systematically killed men, women and children. Soldiers bludgeoned villagers with a sledgehammer, threw them down a well, and raped women and girls before killing them, according to court papers filed in a case brought by US prosecutors against another former kaibil.
Pimentel denied being present at the massacre, saying he left the area in November 1982 to prepare enrolment papers for the US military training centre at the School of the Americas in Panama.
Guatemala opened an investigation into the killings in 1994 and unearthed 162 skeletons. Several years later, authorities issued arrest warrants for 17 kaibiles but the cases languished.
In August 2011, a Guatemalan court sentenced each of three other former special forces soldiers to 6,060 years in prison for the massacre, and sentenced a former army second lieutenant to 6,066 years.
The ruling comes as Guatemala seeks to clean up atrocities from the civil war in which nearly a quarter of a million people died or went missing.
In January, courts opened a trial against the former dictator Efrain Rios Montt who ruled the country for 17 months during the war's bloodiest period from 1982-1983.
Montt, denied amnesty by a judge last month, faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. He is accused of ordering the killings of at least 1,700 innocent Mayan people during a government crackdown on leftist insurgents. Montt appealed the amnesty decision to Guatemala's constitutional court and is awaiting a verdict.
His defence lawyers have said the 85-year-old did not control battlefield operations and that commanders were responsible for making decisions in their own posts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ma ... -dos-erres
Guatemalan ex-soldier jailed for 6,060 years over Dos Erres massacre
Pedro Pimentel Rios is fifth member of elite military force to be imprisoned for role in killings of 201 people in 1982
Agencies in Guatemala City
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 March 2012
A former Guatemalan special forces soldier has been sentenced to 6,060 years in prison for his role in the killings of 201 people in a 1982 massacre.
Pedro Pimentel Rios was the fifth member of the elite military force to be sentenced to 6,060 years or more for what became known as the Dos Erres massacre after the killings in the northern Guatemala village during the 1960-96 civil war.
The sentence handed down by a three-judge panel is largely symbolic since under Guatemalan law the maximum time a prisoner can serve is 50 years. It specified 30 years for each of the 201 deaths, plus 30 years for crimes against humanity.
Pimentel Rios, 54, is a former instructor at a training school for the military force known as the Kaibiles. He lived in Santa Ana, California, and worked in a clothing factory for years until being detained by immigration authorities in May 2010. He was extradited to Guatemala last year.
The civil war claimed at least 200,000 lives, with the country's US-backed army being responsible for most of the deaths, according to the findings of a truth commission.
In December 1982, several dozen soldiers stormed Dos Erres, searched homes for missing weapons and systematically killed men, women and children. Soldiers bludgeoned villagers with a sledgehammer, threw them down a well, and raped women and girls before killing them, according to court papers filed in a case brought by US prosecutors against another former kaibil.
Pimentel denied being present at the massacre, saying he left the area in November 1982 to prepare enrolment papers for the US military training centre at the School of the Americas in Panama.
Guatemala opened an investigation into the killings in 1994 and unearthed 162 skeletons. Several years later, authorities issued arrest warrants for 17 kaibiles but the cases languished.
In August 2011, a Guatemalan court sentenced each of three other former special forces soldiers to 6,060 years in prison for the massacre, and sentenced a former army second lieutenant to 6,066 years.
The ruling comes as Guatemala seeks to clean up atrocities from the civil war in which nearly a quarter of a million people died or went missing.
In January, courts opened a trial against the former dictator Efrain Rios Montt who ruled the country for 17 months during the war's bloodiest period from 1982-1983.
Montt, denied amnesty by a judge last month, faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. He is accused of ordering the killings of at least 1,700 innocent Mayan people during a government crackdown on leftist insurgents. Montt appealed the amnesty decision to Guatemala's constitutional court and is awaiting a verdict.
His defence lawyers have said the 85-year-old did not control battlefield operations and that commanders were responsible for making decisions in their own posts.
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Efraín Ríos Montt: Guatemala human rights groups welcome genocide trial
'...Prosecutors said the dictator, who seized power in a coup, unleashed a campaign of slaughter, terror and rape against Maya highland villages which were suspected of backing leftwing guerrillas.
Human rights groups have long accused him of being among the cruellest despots during Latin America's cold war era of US-backed counter-insurgency operations. The Reagan administration armed and supported Ríos Montt, calling him a bulwark against communism.'
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroe ... Montt.html
According to Amnesty International, in just four months there were more than 2,000 fully documented extrajudicial killings by the Guatemalan army: 'People of all ages were not only shot, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disembowelled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death.' The Catholic bishops said: 'Never in our national history has it come to such extremes.'
US President Ronald Reagan, visiting Guatemala on a swing through Latin America, hailed Rios Montt as 'totally dedicated to democracy'.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699a2.html
During a swing through Latin America, Reagan discounted the mounting reports of hundreds of Maya villages being eradicated.
On Dec. 4, 1982, after meeting with Guatemala's dictator, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as "totally dedicated to democracy." Reagan declared that Rios Montt's government had been "getting a bum rap."
But the newly declassified U.S. government records reveal that Reagan's praise -- and the embassy analysis -- flew in the face of corroborated accounts from U.S. intelligence.
Based on its own internal documents, the Reagan administration knew that the Guatemalan military indeed was engaged in a scorched-earth campaign against the Mayans.
According to these “secret” cables, the CIA was confirming Guatemalan government massacres in 1981-82 even as Reagan was moving to loosen the military aid ban.
...On Jan. 7, 1983, Reagan lifted the ban on military aid to Guatemala and authorized the sale of $6 million in military hardware. Approval covered spare parts for UH-1H helicopters and A-37 aircraft used in counterinsurgency operations. Radios, batteries and battery charges were also in package.
State Department spokesman John Hughes said political violence in the cities had "declined dramatically" and that rural conditions had improved too.
In February 1983, however, a secret CIA cable noted a rise in "suspect right-wing violence" with kidnappings of students and teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and gullies.
CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt's order to the “Archivos” in October to "apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they saw fit."
Despite these grisly facts on the ground, the annual State Department human rights survey praised the supposedly improved human rights situation in Guatemala. "The overall conduct of the armed forces had improved by late in the year" 1982, the report stated.
A different picture -- far closer to the secret information held by the U.S. government -- was coming from independent human rights investigators. On March 17, 1983, Americas Watch representatives condemned the Guatemalan army for human rights atrocities against the Indian population.
New York attorney Stephen L. Kass said these findings included proof that the government carried out "virtually indiscriminate murder of men, women and children of any farm regarded by the army as possibly supportive of guerrilla insurgents."
Rural women suspected of guerrilla sympathies were raped before execution, Kass said. Children were "thrown into burning homes. They are thrown in the air and speared with bayonets.
We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads are destroyed." [AP, March 17, 1983]
Publicly, however, senior Reagan officials continued to put on a happy face. On June 12, 1983, special envoy Richard B. Stone praised "positive changes" in Rios Montt's government.
Former Guatemalan dictator convicted of genocide and jailed for 80 years
Efraín Ríos Montt held to account for abuses in campaign that killed an estimated 200,000 and led to 45,000 disappearances
Sibylla Brodzinsky and Jonathan Watts
The Guardian, Saturday 11 May 2013
The former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide on Friday after a court found him guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
It is the first time a former head of state has been found guilty of genocide in their own country.
"We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide," said Judge Yazmin Barrios, adding that Ríos Montt "had knowledge of what was happening and did nothing to stop it".
The trial was the first time a former head of government has been held to account in Guatemala for the abuses carried out during a 36-year conflict that killed an estimated 200,000 people and led to 45,000 other "disappearances".
The vast majority of the victims were members of indigenous groups that make up about half of the population....
i was a republican during the reagan administration
since realizing he was self-serving and crazy
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
2) The Reagan administration remains one of the two worst presidencies of my lifetime. That he has been deified by the GOP is an embarrassment.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
Allan Nairn: After Ríos Montt Verdict, Time for U.S. to Account for Its Role in Guatemalan Genocide
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, investigative journalist Allan Nairn, the compensation end of the trial, what you feel needs to be done now? You have covered this throughout these decades.
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, all of the crimes that Rigoberta Menchú just described were crimes not just of General Ríos Montt, but also of the U.S. government. The U.S. prosecutors in Washington should immediately convene a grand jury with two missions: first, coming to the aid of the Guatemalan attorney general, who has just been ordered by the court to investigate all others involved in Ríos Montt’s crimes, by releasing all classified U.S. documents about what happened during the slaughter, which U.S. personnel were involved, providing to the Guatemalan attorney general a list of all Guatemalan army officials and security force officials who were on the payroll of the American CIA, and then proceeding to issue indictments against U.S. officials who acted in the role of accessory or accomplice to the crimes for which Ríos Montt has already been convicted.
AMY GOODMAN: And those people, you believe, would include?
ALLAN NAIRN: The top officials of the Reagan administration who made the policy—President Reagan is deceased, but his top aides, including Elliott Abrams and many others, are still alive; the U.S. CIA personnel on the ground who worked within the G2, the military intelligence unit that coordinated the assassinations and disappearances; the U.S. military attachés who worked with the Guatemalan generals to develop this sweep-and-massacre strategy in the mountains. There would be hundreds of U.S. officials who were complicit in this and should be subpoenaed, called before a grand jury and subjected to indictment. And the U.S. should be ready to extradite them to Guatemala to face punishment, if the Guatemalan authorities are able to proceed with this. And General Pérez Molina is one who should be included. And Pérez Molina, himself, was among—
AMY GOODMAN: The president.
ALLAN NAIRN: Yes—is among those who was on the CIA payroll.
There's not much to defend here though. Conflict is not going to happen with a thread such as this. I'm not knocking the thread- it's completely fair as well as poignant and disturbing- but what type of person isn't affected by such a calamity? The ones that consistently puff their chest out over the slightest criticism even have enough sense to stay out of this one. And this says a lot.
Some people here have tried defending it: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=191987&start=105#p4512982
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=191987&start=75#p4507933
Oy Vey!
Let me guess...the Carter administration is not the other
Care to make a wager on that?
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
Oh. Well... I guess I shouldn't be surprised. By no means are those the most obscene comments I have read on this forum in the last few months.