Montt Trial Decision

This Friday May 10th, Former dictator Efrain Rios Montt was found guilty on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in a trial held by his own government.  In an earlier post I had briefly outlined the history of the civil war in Guatemala and the brutal war time crimes that left many dead.  

   "Rios Montt being found guilty ... is a significant step forward for justice and accountability in Guatemala," said Matthew Kennis, Amnesty International's chair for Central America-Mexico Coordination Group.[1]

As i mentioned earlier, this trial was one of the first ones where a country persecuted its own leader on charges of genocide.  

Survivors and relatives of victims have sought for 30 years to bring punishment for Rios Montt. For international observers and Guatemalans on both sides of the war, the trial could be a turning point in a nation still wrestling with the trauma of a conflict that killed some 200,000 people.[1]

Rios Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison, a sentence that is quite controversial since he is 86 and the maximum sentence in Guatemala is 50 years.  Which leads me to wonder why they didn't give him a term of life in prison.  

This is what Montt said when he testified for the first time on the Thursday before his verdict, "I declare myself innocent," Rios Montt told the three-judge tribunal as many in the audience applauded. "It was never my intention or my goal to destroy a whole ethnic group, "I declare myself innocent," Rios Montt told the three-judge tribunal as many in the audience applauded. "It was never my intention or my goal to destroy a whole ethnic group."[1]

I tried paraphrasing this excerpt from The New York Times article but i felt that taking any of it out would be worse, so here it is. I had mentioned in one of my blog posts earlier about US government backing of Montt's regime and I felt these next few excerpts were pertinent.

The American military had a close relationship with the Guatemalan military well into the 1970s before President Jimmy Carter’s administration cut off aid. When General Ríos Montt seized power in March 1982, President Ronald Reagan’s administration cultivated him as a reliable Central American ally in its battle against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and Salvadoran guerrillas.

Those interests influenced the way American officials treated evidence of the massacres. They were quick to accept military explanations that guerrillas had carried out the killings, said Kate Doyle, a Guatemala expert at the National Security Archive, a Washington research group that works to obtain declassified government documents.

By the end of 1982, however, the State Department had gathered evidence that the army was behind the massacres.

But even then, the administration insisted that General Ríos Montt was working to reduce the violence. After a regional meeting, President Reagan described him as “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.”[2]

1.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/efrain-rios-montt-convicted_n_3256070.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=440852,b=facebook
2.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/world/americas/gen-efrain-rios-montt-of-guatemala-guilty-of-genocide.html?_r=0