Guatemala: ex-military officers convicted of crimes against humanity
Guatemala: ex-military officers convicted of crimes against humanity
Four former high-ranking officers convicted of 1981 rape and torture of young woman and disappearance of her teenage brother
Nina Lakhani in Mexico City
Wed 23 May 2018 12.57 EDT
Four former high-ranking Guatemalan military officers once considered untouchable have been convicted of crimes against humanity. They were also found guilty of aggravated sexual abuse against a young activist, Emma Guadalupe Molina Theissen, one of a small number of civilians who escaped army custody during the country’s 36-year civil war.
Three of the officers – the former head of the armed forces, Benedicto Lucas García, former intelligence chief Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas and local commander Hugo Ramiro Zaldaña Rojas – were also found guilty of the forced disappearance of Emma’s 14-year-old brother Marco Antonio and sentenced to 58 years’ jail by the court for high-risk crimes in Guatemala City.
The Molina Theissen family have been searching for Marco Antonio since 6 October 1981, when he was bundled into a sack by military officers and driven away. The Guatemalan state admitted responsibility for grave crimes against the Molina Theissen family in 2000, but it has taken 37 years for the perpetrators to be brought to account.
. . .
But Molina Theissen managed to escape, causing embarrassment to military intelligence. Her family had been under surveillance since 1955, the year after the CIA-backed coup, and were designated “internal enemies”.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/23/guatemala-ex-military-officers-convicted-of-crimes-against-humanity
Also posted in LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142065782