Guatemala Las Dos Erres civil war massacre trial begins

[Judi Lynn]

25 July 2011 Last updated at 18:34 ET
Guatemala Las Dos Erres civil war massacre trial begins

Four former Guatemalan soldiers are standing trial for the massacre of more than 220 people during the country's civil war.

The men are accused of being part of a Guatemalan counter-insurgency unit that carried out the massacre in the village of Las Dos Erres in 1982.

~snip~
At least 200,000 people - mainly from the indigenous Maya population - were killed during the country's 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996.

In 1999, a UN-backed commission estimated 93% of the killings were carried out by the security forces, who said they were targeting left-wing guerrillas.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14285665

[Judi Lynn]

1. Reagan & Guatemala's Death Files

Reagan & Guatemala's Death Files
by Robert Parry
iF magazine, May/June 1999

Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America.
After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.

The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for the optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.

In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.

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.

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan_Guatemala.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. Guatemala troops claim innocence at massacre trial

Jul 25, 8:31 PM EDT
Guatemala troops claim innocence at massacre trial

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Three former Guatemalan soldiers and an officer have claimed innocence on the first day of trial for a 1982 massacre in which hundreds of men, women and children were killed.

The defendants say they were not in the village of Dos Erres the day it was stormed by soldiers. They stand accused of killing 201 farmers. At least 250 people died overall in the massacre, according to court filings.

The defendants said Monday that they had been stationed elsewhere. Three of them had been members of an elite force known as "kaibiles."

Court filings say soldiers threw bodies down a well, and raped and killed women and girls.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_GUATEMALA_MASSACRE_TRIAL?SECTION=HOME&SITE=AP&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Judi Lynn]

3. The Dos Erres Massacre

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/41861000/jpg/_41861064_guatemala_203.jpg

Villagers carrying remains of their loved ones for reburial.

http://www.cja.org.nyud.net:8090/img/original/A-Guatemalan-youth-stands-among-candles-set-up-to-form-the-words-Enough-Already_cropped.jpg
Madrid, Spain -- April 4, 2011. Judge Santiago Pedraz at the Spanish National Court has issued an arrest warrant and an extradition request for Jorge Sosa Orantes for his participation in the Dos Erres massacre of 1982, where more than 200 people, including women, children, and the elderly, were brutally slaughtered. CJA, lead counsel in the Genocide case since 2006, requested the warrant on behalf of the victims. Sosa Orantes, a U.S. and Canadian citizen, has been charged with genocide, torture and extrajudicial killing. After his extradition he could face trial and be sentenced to 30 years in Spanish prison.

Sosa Orantes, also known as Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, was a member of an elite military unit known as Kaibiles that was responsible for this and many other massacres. Following orders of the Guatemalan Military High Command, Sosa Orantes and troops under his command surrounded Dos Erres, preventing anyone from escaping, and searched every home for weapons. They separated the men from the women and children and then in the course of three days, systematically killed the villagers. Among other things, they killed all the babies, hitting them in the head with a sledgehammer, and threw them into a well. Members of the special patrol also forcibly raped many of the women and girls for days at Dos Erres before killing them.

More:
http://www.cja.org/article.php?id=981

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The Dos Erres Massacre

In the early 1980s, the Guatemalan army responded to a guerilla offensive with “Operación Ceniza” (“Operation Ashes”). <1> Adopting a strategy called “draining the sea the fish swim in,” the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt ordered armed forces to raze entire villages and slaughter indigenous peasants suspected of guerilla sympathies. <2> These anti-civilian operations were spearheaded by the Kaibils, special forces units known for their shocking cruelty. <3>

The Dos Erres Massacre, while infamous, was just one of hundreds of atrocities committed in this time. It started in October 1982, when guerrillas ambushed an army convoy near the tiny village of Dos Erres, killing 21 soldiers and taking 19 rifles. The Army retaliated on December 6, 1982, flying in 58 Kaibil soldiers to wipe out the inhabitants of Dos Erres, considered to be guerrilla sympathizers. <4>

Disguised as guerrillas, the Kaibils descended on the village and herded the men into the school building and the women into two churches. After searching, in vain, for communist propaganda and contraband, the soldiers began the slaughter. They threw a three-month old baby, alive, into an empty water well, then proceeded to smash the heads of infants against walls and trees. The skulls of older children were crushed with a sledgehammer. <5>

The villagers were then interrogated, then shot and dumped into the well. Women and girls were raped, then mutilated with machetes. The Kaibils shoveled dirt into the well; the survivors’ cries still audible through the earthen seal. An estimated 350 civilians were massacred at Dos Erres.

More:
http://cja.org/article.php?list=type&type=459

[Judi Lynn]

4. Former Guatemala soldiers accuse fellow troops in Dos Erres massacre trial

Former Guatemala soldiers accuse fellow troops in Dos Erres massacre trial
By Associated Press, Published: July 25

GUATEMALA CITY — Two former Guatemalan soldiers testified that fellow troops standing trial Monday bludgeoned villagers and threw them down a well in a 1982 massacre of more than 200 men, women and children.

The two witnesses were testifying on the first day of the trial of three former soldiers and an officer accused in the notorious Dos Erres massacre, in which soldiers allegedly killed at least 250 people in a village in northern Guatemala. The four men are accused of 201 of the killings.

The men told the court they were innocent, claiming they were not in the village of Dos Erres on the day of the massacre. Three of the accused were members of an elite Guatemalan military force known as “kaibiles.”

But witnesses testified that at least two of the four men being charged took part in the killings.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/guatemala-troops-claim-innocence-at-trial-for-dos-erres-massacre/2011/07/25/gIQA3jAbZI_story.html