Monsignor Juan José Gerardi Conedera (27 December 1922 – 26 April 1998) was a Guatemalan Roman Catholic bishop and human rights defender who was beaten to death two days after releasing a report on victims of the Guatemalan Civil War.
Between 1980 and 1983 El Quiché saw increased levels of violence in the conflict between the Army and various rebel guerrilla factions. Hundreds of Roman Catholic catechists and heads of Christian communities, most of whom were of Maya origin, were brutally murdered. Gerardi repeatedly asked the military authorities to control their actions.
While serving as president of the Guatemalan Conference of Bishops, he spoke out openly about the Spanish embassy fire of 31 January 1980 in which 39 people lost their lives and which subsequently the Government of Guatemala became suspected of starting. That same year he was called to the Vatican to attend a synod. Upon returning to Guatemala he was denied entry to the country. He travelled to neighbouring El Salvador, which refused to grant him right of asylum, and he settled temporarily in Costa Rica where he remained until military president Romeo Lucas García was overthrown in 1982, allowing him to return to Guatemala.
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On 28 August 1984, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Guatemala.
National Reconciliation Commission
In 1988 the Conference of Bishops assigned Gerardi and Rodolfo Quezada Toruño to serve on the National Reconciliation Commission. This later led to the creation of the Office of Human Rights of the Archbishopric (Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado, ODHA), which to date provides assistance for the victims of human rights violation. In that context work began on the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI) project. On 24 April 1998, REMHI presented the results of its work in the report Guatemala: Nunca más. This report carried statements from thousands of witnesses and victims of repression during the Civil War and placed the blame for the vast majority of the violations on the government and the army.
The task of historical recovery that Gerardi and his team pursued was fundamental in the subsequent work of the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), set up within the framework of the 1996 peace process.
Although the Vatican, the REMHI and Gerardi were accused of furthering Marxist propaganda because the REMHI blames the National Army for the vast majority of deaths during the civil war, the UN Truth Commission Report came to very similar conclusions.
Assassination
On 26 April 1998, two days after the publication of REMHI's report, Bishop Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in the garage of his home in Guatemala City. His assailants used a concrete slab, disfiguring him to the extent that his face was unrecognisable and identification of the corpse was made by means of his episcopal ring.
On 8 June 2001, three army officers – Col. Byron Disrael Lima Estrada and Capt. Byron Lima Oliva (father and son), and José Obdulio Villanueva – were convicted of his murder and sentenced to 30-year prison terms. A priest, Mario Orantes, whom the court had identified as an accomplice, was sentenced to 20 years. The case was precedent-setting in that it was the first time that members of the military had faced trial before civilian courts. The defendants appealed, and in March 2005 an appeals court lowered the Limas' sentences to 20 years. Orantes' sentence was left unchanged and Villanueva had been killed in prison before the appeal verdict was reached. These revised prison terms were upheld by the Constitutional Court in April 2007.
The elder Estrada had been trained at the School of Americas.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Jos%C3%A9_Gerardi_Conedera
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110815177#post6
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More about this particular vicious, hellish bludgeoning murder in the post following her post above.
Clearly assassinations will and do happen when and where the victim is within reach.
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