Defending Human Rights in Latin America

I have a new post up on Defending Human Rights in Latin America at Al Jazeera.It's been about two weeks since I wrote it so it sounds a bit dated already.

Time Magazine recently named The Protester as its person of the year 2011. If I were to confine the choice to Latin America, I would have to support the human rights defender. While there have been previous successes, 2011 seems to have been a watershed in which nearly every country has made some progress in bringing those responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses to justice.

What do you think? On balance, was it a pretty good year for holding human rights violators accountable? 

Trial begins in Dos Erres Massacre

The trial of four men accused of having participated in the massacre at Dos Erres in December 1982 began Monday in Guatemala City. Daniel Martinez, Carlos Carias, Manuel Pop and Reyes Collin are accused of having killed 201 people from the village of Dos Erres in the Peten department. Over the years, authorities have recovered 171 victims, including at least 67 children under the age of 12.

While the four men claim that they were not in Dos Erres on the day of the massacre, two fellow soldiers testified via satellite from Mexico that at least two of the four were indeed present and had participated in that day's brutality.

Regardless of how the trial ends, there will be other trials related to the Dos Erres massacre. Seven of the 18 alleged perpetrators are in custody (these four men plus three others arrested in the United States). This trial has been delayed since 2000. It is the second "massacre trial" related to the civil war. The first one in 2004 resulted in convictions but was later overturned on appeal.

I am hoping for justice to be done, but I am not optimistic.


(Al Jazeera, Miami Herald, and Yahoo)

Dos Erres Murderer Deported to Guatemala

The US government deported Pedro Pimentel Rios to his native Guatemala on Tuesday. Pimentel was one of sixty or so kaibiles who carried out the murder of approximately 200 Guatemalans in December 1982 in what is known as the Dos Erres Massacre. He was turned over to Guatemalan authorities and is scheduled to have his first hearing on murder and human rights abuses on Thursday. (Yahoo)

It's great that the US arrested Pimentel and deported him to Guatemala to face charges for the crimes he committed in 1982. As I've mentioned before, I rather see accused war criminals arrested and deported to face charges in their native country rather than punished in the US on immigration charges.

"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 [Pimentel's attorney] said. (Yahoo II)

No he was not the only person responsible. But even if the intellectual authors of the scorched earth program and those who covered it up in the US government have not been brought to justice, that doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate Pimentel's arrest and deportation to face charges in Guatemala.  

The goal now should be to ensure that the legal proceedings initiated in the last few years do not die with the election of a new president in Guatemala.  I can't imagine that the prosecution of former military officers and PACs will be at the top of an Otto Perez Molina administration.  

Another Cold War Arrest in Guatemala

Guatemalan security forces on Thursday arrested a former national police chief wanted in the disappearance of a student union leader in 1984 during the country's civil war.

The arrest of Hector Bol de la Cruz, 70, at his home in Jutiapa, southwest of the capital, is the latest step in a government crackdown on officials accused of war crimes during the conflict that racked Guatemala between 1960 and 1996.

Bol de la Cruz, who was chief of police between 1983 and 1985, is accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and forced disappearance of Fernando Garcia, who was last seen when officers detained him as he left home in the capital on February 18, 1984.

Last October a court in Guatemala sentenced two of Bol de la Cruz's former agents to 40 years in prison for their role in the disappearance of Garcia, who many believe was murdered.

The center-left administration of President Alvaro Colom has been under pressure to bring war criminals to justice in Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

Pitting a string of right-wing governments against leftist insurgents, the civil war led to nearly a quarter of a million deaths, and many thousands of people are still missing. (Yahoo)

Come on Mauricio. If Guatemalan courts can prosecute war criminals, so can you. Even if you do not personally want to see the 1993 amnesty repealed, don't work against those who do.

Impropriety in Portillo case?

On Wednesday, Prensa Libre began running stories about a connection between Judge Patricia Veras and Alfonso Portillo. The photo above shows Veras' husband,Ronald Otto Valvert Mejia, and Telesforo Guerra, one of Portillo's lawyers in the elevator together.

When confronted, Veras first said that there was no relationship between her husband and Guerra. Minutes later, however, she corrected herself and said that they only had a "professional" relationship. Guerra

Valvert has said that he has a friendship with Guerra, but not an close one. Valvert also said that he and Guerra had never worked on a case together. Guerra contradicted him, however, when he said that they had indeed worked on a case together. It also turns out the Valvert was Guerra's student some thirty years ago in college.

Here's the video showing Guerra and Valvert together at the Public Ministry's office.


On the one hand, Veras should have made the connection between her husband and Portillo's lawyer known either before the trial or when she first became aware of the fact. Even if it did not influence her decision in the case, the photos and connection between the two undermine the perception of impartiality. On the other hand, Guatemala is a pretty small country where most lawyers and judges know each other. They run in the same professional and social circles and it would be really hard to find many judges and lawyers with no personal or professional relationship at all.

Luis Archila, the president of the country's Supreme Court of Justice, says that they will not hesitate to investigate should there be some accusation of corruption. If this is all we have to go on, I can't say that the connection between Veras' husband and Portillo's lawyer is going to be enough to invalidate the decision. There was a second judge who agreed with the ruling. We'll just have to wait for additional details to come out. These connections, however, are not going to help convince the majority of Guatemalans who had already questioned the court's ruling. 

Impunity Reigns Supreme in Guatemala

This is turning in to a rough week for Guatemala and for the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). The only good news is that several people were indicted for the murder of Victor Rivera. Now the bad news.

Alfonso Portillo and two other defendants were found not guilty on charges of embezzling several million dollars from the Ministry of Defense during Portillo's term in office. According to two of the three judges that ruled on the case, the prosecution, supported by CICIG, failed to prove that Portillo and the others were directly involved in the theft. The UCN is already planning to run Portillo for congress.

CICIG and the Mutual Support Group (GAM) expressed their dissatisfaction with the court's ruling and the prosecutor's office is appealing the case.

The Monday ruling "reflects the true state of justice in Guatemala," said the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an office created by the United Nations to clean up the country's legal system.

Costa Rican former attorney general Francisco Dall'Anese, who heads the CICIG, said his office believes it supplied enough evidence to convict the three former officials.

And a rights group known as the Mutual Support Group (GAM) threatened to sue two of the judges on the panel that acquitted Portillo.

In addition to ruling on the appeal, the courts will also have to weigh in on the extradition request submitted by the US so that it can try Portillo on charges of embezzling over million dollars in foreign donations intended to buy school supplies.

On Tuesday, in another sign of impunity in Guatemala, the country's high risk court ordered the release of Alejandro Giammattei, the country's former prison director. Giammattei was accused of participating in the murder of seven inmates during a 2007 uprising at Pavon prison and the alleged execution of three inmates who escaped from the “El Infiernito” prison in 2005.

Two other accused are fighting extradition requests from Switzerland and Spain. CICIG had accused Giammattei, Vielmann, and Sperisen, as well as another 16 people, of belonging to a criminal organization that carried out executions both inside and outside the country's prisons.

The Portillo and Giammattei cases were supposed to bring an end to impunity in Guatemala. Convictions would have sent a former president and former presidential candidate to jail on corruption and murder charges. The international community's investment in CICIG would have been validated. Instead, CICIG's major success remains solving a suicide.

Any one else get the impression that the UN made a mistake extending CICIG's mandate before there was tangible proof that Guatemala had turned a corner in establishing the rule of law? The Guatemalan people deserve better.

Portillo found not guitly

El Periodico

In a surprising verdict yesterday afternoon, a Guatemalan court exonerated former president Alfonso Portillo, former defense minister Eduardo Arevalo Lacs and former finance minister Hiram Maza Castellanos. The three were accused of embezzling 120 million quetzales (~$15 dollars) from the Ministry of Defense during Portillo's 2000-2004 presidential term.

Prensa Libre

Government prosecutors had sought a maximum 10-year prison sentence for the accused. They also wanted the three permanently banned from political life. However, the majority decision (two out of three) stated that the prosecution did not prove its case and that the men should be set the men free.

Siglo XXI

In particular, the court said that two key prosecution witnesses (Jose Armando Llort Quiteño and Solomon Giron Molina, former president and finance director of the National Mortgage Bank) lied under oath and that their testimony was critical to passing judgment on the accused.


This is tough loss for CICIG, the Attorney General's office, and the people of Guatemala. In January I wrote that

Portillo will be the first former president to stand trial in Guatemala, so it is an important test of the CICIG-improved justice system. Hopefully, the trial will not prove as much of an embarrassment as the recent acquittal in Mexico of a man who bragged about killing his girlfriend.

Whatever the outcome, Portillo will probably have to stand trial in the US and/or France at some point as well.

I'm afraid it is an embarrassment one way or another. If Portillo is indeed innocent, CICIG and the Public Prosecutor's office do not look good because they brought the case against him when they lacked sufficient evidence to convict. However if Portillo is indeed guilty of the crimes that he has been accused of, then this brings into serious doubt any improvement in the country's criminal justice system.

 

Portillo is not out of the woods yet. He can still be extradited to the United States to face charges. I imagine that his acquittal yesterday will make his extradition less likely, but I really don't know.

 

While the Guatemalan criminal justice system suffered a severe setback in Portillo's trial, the prosecutor's office and CICIG redeemed themselves did win convictions in the murder of Victor Rivera, a former advisor to the country's Interior Minister.

Portillo Trial Begins

Former President Alfonso Portillo is currently on trial in Guatemala on embezzlement charges. He is accused of having stolen approximately $15-16 million dollars from the Defense Ministry in 2001. Portillo was president from 2000-2004. Two others former ministers are also on trial - former Defense Minister Eduardo Arevalo and former Finance Minister Manuel Maza.

CICIG and the US and French governments have provided some evidence against Portillo, including information on how money was transferred abroad in bank accounts registered to different family members. The trial was originally scheduled to begin in September, but defense lawyers have thrown up legal roadblocks along the way.

The trial is scheduled to last one month, but even Friday's opening got off to a rocky start. It was delayed a few hours while defense lawyers protested the presence of several CICIG bodyguards. They claimed that Portillo and his lawyers were intimidated by their presence. Prosecutors, on the other hand, were arguing that Arevalo and Maza should not have been been released and put under house arrest. They were flight risks as evidence by their previous flight from justice. They were also concerned that several of the fourteen witnesses have already been threatened. (BBC, Siglo XXI, El Periodico).

Portillo will be the first former president to stand trial in Guatemala, so it is an important test of the CICIG-improved justice system.  Hopefully, the trial will not prove as much of an embarrassment as the recent acquittal in Mexico of a man who bragged about killing his girlfriend.

Whatever the outcome, Portillo will probably have to stand trial in the US and/or France at some point as well.