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Former Guatemala leader guilty of genocide
Former military leader Efrain Rios Montt sentenced to 80 years in jail
over massacres of indigenous people in the 1980s.
Last Modified: 11 May 2013 08:15
A Guatemalan court has convicted former military leader Efrain Rios Montt
on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 80 years
in prison.
A three-judge tribunal on Friday issued the verdict after the nearly
two-month trial in which dozens of victims testified about horrific atrocities.
Prosecutors said Rios Montt must have had knowledge of the massacres of
Ixil, indigenous people of Mayan descent living in Guatemala, when he ruled the
country from March 1982 to August 1983 at the height of its 36-year civil war.
"The defendant is responsible for masterminding the crime of genocide,"
Judge Jazmin Barrios said. "The corresponding punishment must be imposed."
She said he was also guilty of war crimes.
The court, filled with victims and their relatives, erupted in applause
and cheers.
Rios Montt has maintained that he never knew of or ordered the massacres
while in power.
He did not express emotion as the verdict was read. When the judge said
his house arrest was being revoked and he would be sent to jail, he nodded.
'Political show'
Later, he told reporters that his conscience was clear, as he derided the
verdict.
"It is an international political show that is going to hurt the soul of
the Guatemalan people, but we are at peace because we never spilled, or stained
our hands with, the blood of our brothers," Rios Montt said.
"I am not upset because I abided by the law," he said, insisting he did
the right thing for his country by fighting the "national problem" of rebels.
The war between the government and leftist rebels cost more than 200,000
lives and ended in peace accords in 1996.
The 86-year-old former general is the first former Latin American leader
ever found guilty of such a charge.
He can appeal the verdict.
In a court hearing, Benjamin Geronimo, president of the Justice and
Reconciliation Association, said he survived massacres and killings that
claimed the lives of 256 members of his community.
"I saw it with my own eyes, I'm not going to lie. Children, pregnant
women and the elderly were killed,'' Geronimo, an Ixil Indian who spoke on
behalf of the victims, said.
Prosecutors say that while in power, Rios Montt was aware of, and thus
responsible for, the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil people in the towns of
San Juan Cotzal, San Gaspar Chajul and Santa Maria Nebaj in Guatemala's western
highlands.
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