Guatemalan soldiers sentenced in Indians' massacre

[Judi Lynn]

Guatemalan soldiers sentenced in Indians' massacre
August 2, 2011 8:35 PM

(AP) GUATEMALA CITY — A Guatemalan court has sentenced three former special forces soldiers to 6,060 years in prison each for the 1982 massacre of more than 200 men, women and children.

The court also has sentenced a former army second lieutenant to 6,066 years in prison for the same massacre.

Guatemalan law, however, says convicts can only be in prison for a maximum of 50 years.

Authorities say soldiers raped and killed women and girls, and banished hundreds of people from the community of Dos Erres.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/02/ap/latinamerica/main20087244.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

1. More on this trial from July 29th:

Trial over U.S.-Backed Guatemalan Massacre at Las Dos Erres Begins
29th July 2011

Four former Guatemalan soldiers are on trial for the 1982 massacre of more than 220 men, women and children at Las Dos Erres. The four were members of an elite U.S.-trained and armed unit supported by the communist-obsessed Reagan administration. All four had found refuge in the United States.

According to the BBC, Carlos Antonio Carias, Manuel Pop, Reyes Collin and Daniel Martinez, former members of the elite Kaibiles unit, are being tried in a Guatemalan court. It is the first time military human rights abusers are being brought to justice. Human rights groups hailed the trial as “historic.”

More than 200,000 people, mostly poor, indigenous Mayans, were slaughtered during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, which traces its roots to the U.S. overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. A leftist and a reformer, Arbenz set about improving the lot of Guatemala’s poor. He began expropriating land held by United Fruit Company, an American behemoth that was one of the largest landowners in the country. Life was hell for United Fruit employees, who were little more than slaves in the “Banana Republic.”

Arbenz’s reform, naturally, made him the enemy of Washington, Wall Street and the Guatemalan elite class. He was duly disposed of in a 1954 CIA coup. The CIA’s hand-picked replacement for Arbenz, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, rolled back the sweeping social reforms that made Arbenz so popular as he re-established the country as a puppet state that served elite and foreign (read American) interests over those of the Guatemalan people. Power was concentrated in the hands of a few fabulously wealthy families while the Mayan masses languished in serf-like conditions. This led to a leftist uprising and all-out civil war by 1960.

More:
http://morallowground.com/2011/07/29/trial-over-u-s-backed-guatemalan-massacre-at-las-dos-erres-begins/

[Judi Lynn]

2. Dos Erres massacre soldiers sentenced

2 August 2011 Last updated at 20:56 ET
Dos Erres massacre soldiers sentenced

Four former Guatemalan soldiers have been sentenced to life in prison for the massacre of more than 200 people during the country's civil conflict.

The court said the four had committed crimes against humanity when they were part of a counter-insurgency unit which carried out the killings in the village of Dos Erres in 1982.

They received a sentence of 30 years for each of the 201 victims.

They are the first former soldiers to be convicted for human-rights abuses.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14383071