{"id":19991,"date":"2013-05-21T05:25:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T13:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=19991"},"modified":"2013-05-21T05:48:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T13:48:23","slug":"guatemala-high-court-annuls-rios-montt-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/21\/guatemala-high-court-annuls-rios-montt-conviction\/","title":{"rendered":"Guatemala High Court Annuls Rios Montt Conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"War

War criminal Rios Montt with his pal, Ronald Reagan.<\/p><\/div>\n

The historic conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity was annulled late last night by the country’s high court.<\/p>\n

BBC<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The three-to-two ruling by a panel of constitutional judges annuls everything that has happened in the trial since 19 April, when Gen Rios Montt was briefly left without a defence lawyer.<\/p>\n

The defence team had walked out of the court on the previous day in protest at what they called “illegal proceedings”.<\/p>\n

…According to the constitutional court ruling, the guilty verdict and the 80-year sentence handed down by Judge Jazmin Barrios on 10 May are therefore now void.<\/p>\n

Human rights group Amnesty International said it was a “devastating blow for the victims of the serious human rights violations committed during the conflict”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Montt’s lawyers had walked out in protest, called for the dismissal of the judges, tried to delay the proceedings, etc. It seems like their tactics to stall were effective, if belatedly.<\/p>\n

See more on the trial and conviction here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> Prior to this news, The New York Times<\/em> hosted a debate<\/a> on just how culpable the Reagan administration was in the war crimes in Guatemala. Here’s Greg Grandin’s take:<\/p>\n

…even before [Reagan’s] 1980 election, two retired generals, who played prominent roles in Reagan\u2019s campaign,\u00a0reportedly\u00a0<\/a>traveled to Central America and told Guatemalan officials that \u201cMr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once in office, Reagan,\u00a0continued\u00a0<\/a>to supply munitions and training to the Guatemalan army, despite a ban on military aid imposed by the Carter administration (existing contracts were exempt from the ban). And economic aid\u00a0continued to flow<\/a>, increasing to $104 million in 1986, from $11 million in 1980, nearly all of it going to the rural western highlands, where the Mayan victims of the genocide lived.<\/p>\n

This aid helped the Guatemalan military implement a key part of its counterinsurgency campaign: following the massacres, soldiers herded survivors into \u201cmodel villages,\u201d detention camps really, where they used food and other material supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development to establish control.<\/p>\n

And Reagan was consistent in his moral\u00a0backing\u00a0<\/a>for Guatemala\u2019s genocidaires. On Dec. 5, 1982, for instance, he met with Rios Montt in Honduras and\u00a0said\u00a0<\/a>he was \u201ca man of great integrity” and “totally dedicated to democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just 10 days before this meeting, one declassified U.S. document\u00a0reveals<\/a>\u00a0that the State Department had been informed of a \u201cwell-founded allegation of a large-scale killing of Indian men, women and children in a remote area by the Guatemalan army.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other declassified documents\u00a0reveal<\/a>\u00a0that the White House was less concerned with the massacres than with their effectiveness, or with\u00a0countering\u00a0<\/a>the\u00a0bad publicity<\/a>stemming from reports of the atrocities.<\/p>\n

The day after Reagan\u2019s endorsement, Guatemalan soldiers arrived at a village called Dos Erres and started\u00a0killing<\/a>. The slaughter went on for three days and by the time it was over at least 162 people, including many children, were dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The historic conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity was annulled late last night by the country’s high court. BBC: The three-to-two ruling by a panel of constitutional judges annuls everything that has happened in the trial since 19 April, when Gen Rios Montt was briefly left without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19991"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19997,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19991\/revisions\/19997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19991"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}