US deports man to Guatemala decades after massacre that left over 150 people dead

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

US deports man to Guatemala decades after massacre that left over 150 people dead
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, July 12, 4:47 PM

LOS ANGELES — U.S. authorities on Tuesday deported a former member of an elite Guatemalan military force suspected of helping carry out a massacre in 1982 that left more than 150 people dead in the Central American nation.

~snip~
The former instructor at the Guatemalan training school for a force known as the “kaibiles” was ordered deported from the United States in May when an immigration judge rejected his bid for asylum.

Pimentel is wanted in Guatemala in connection with the massacre at the village of Dos Erres. He is one of more than a dozen former kaibiles sought by Guatemalan authorities for the killings.

~snip~
“Our government basically supported all these goings on and now, you know, 20 years later, our government is trying to say, gee, no, we would have never done that, and all these people are terrible,” Selph said.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/apnewsbreak-us-deports-1982-massacre-suspect-to-guatemala/2011/07/12/gIQA64Y5AI_story.html?wprss=rss_national

[provis99]

1. how come "elite" forces in Latin America specialize in massacres?

Not what I would consider an "elite" force; more like "death squad" force.

[alp227]

2. The Reagan administration supported Guatemalan death squads

Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anticommunist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.

The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699a1.html