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.[Carlos Carias got an extra six years for aggravated robbery.]
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.
The massacre was one of hundreds that occurred during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. Some 240,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, vanished or died.I'm not sure about a court case that only lasts a couple of days and results in 6,000 year prison sentences. While the evidence was probably pretty overwhelming, it still doesn't sound right. On the other hand, the Prosecutor's Office asked for over 12,000-year sentences for each and the actual sentence only works out to 30 years for each victim. And no amount of jail time is going to make up for the loss that the victims' families feel.
But as I said last Thursday, "And while it is right that these four men from the Dos Erres massacre have their day in court, I am uncomfortable with the fact that the people who trained, ordered, and rewarded them for their behavior will not."
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