Posted on 08/28/2015 10:25:28 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt will face a new genocide trial for his alleged role in persecuting Maya Ixil Indians, but will be tried behind closed doors as he suffers from dementia.
Ríos Montt, 89, will not be required to attend the trial, where he will be represented by his lawyers. The start of the retrial is scheduled for January 11.
The retired general was convicted and sentenced in 2013 to 80 years imprisonment in connection the the killing of 1,771 people in the Mayan Highlands during 1982 and 1983. Ríos Montt ruled Guatemala for nearly 17 months within that period.
Guatemala's constitutional court overturned that conviction 10 days later on a technicality. If the general is convicted in the retrial, he would be detained at home or in a hospital.
Regardless of Ríos Montt's mental state, a retrial was needed to "demonstrate the facts that serious human rights crimes were committed," Héctor Reyes, a lawyer at the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights who represents the Maya Ixil victims, told The New York Times.
That was a very very dark period in Guatemala’s history.
When are they going to try the rest of the Spaniards who murdered and tried to breed out Native Mexicans. Now they are running them clean out of the country.
Whatever
Are there any bright periods?
Was this Guatemala’s civil war, being re-branded as a genocide, or the real deal? We supported our share of military strongmen in Latin America to keep communism in check, and now those communists run many of those countries (and ours as well); former allies are now depicted as devils.
DO communist leaders ever go on trail for genocide? Fidel is only 90 miles away and he makes this Guatemala leader look lime a choir boy.
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