Guatemala ex-soldier goes on trial for Civil War abuses
Source: Associated Press
Sonia Perez D., Associated Press
Updated 5:28 pm CDT, Monday, October 1, 2018
Photo: Luis Soto, AP
FILE - In this Aug. 10, 2016 file photo, Santos Lopez Alonzo is escorted by Interpol agents after landing at the Air Force base in Guatemala City. Lopez Alonzo is charged with crimes against humanity for his role in the 1982 massacre of more than 200 people in the Guatemalan village Dos Erres during the height of the country's civil war. His trial started Monday, Oct. 1, 2018.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Guatemalan ex-soldier deported from the United States two years ago went on trial Monday for the massacre of at least 200 villagers during the Central American nation's civil war.
Santos Lopez Alonzo, who appeared in court shackled and behind bars, is accused of belonging to an elite squad known as the "kaibiles," which carried out the 1982 killings in the northern town of Dos Erres. He is charged with murder and crimes against humanity.
Prosecutors contend the squad came looking for weapons that guerrillas had stolen from the army. Finding none, they say, the troops separated the men and women, torturing and killing the men and raping women and girls. The bodies were tossed into a well.
. . .
According to a U.N. truth commission, about 200,000 people were killed and another 45,000 disappeared during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war, with nearly all of those coming at the hands of the army and allied paramilitaries.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Guatemala-ex-soldier-goes-on-trial-for-Civil-War-13272857.php
Wikipedia:
Dos Erres massacre
. . .
The events of December 1982
In October 1982, guerrillas ambushed an army convoy near Palestina, in the vicinity of Dos Erres. They killed 21 soldiers and took 19 rifles. On 4 December, a contingent of 58 Kaibiles (the elite special forces commandos of the Guatemalan Army) was flown into the area. The following day, they received orders to disguise themselves as guerrillas, deploy to Dos Erres and kill the inhabitants, who were considered guerrilla sympathizers. Dressed as guerrillas, the Kaibiles arrived in the hamlet at 02:30 hrs on 6 December. They forced the inhabitants out of their homes, corralling the men in the schoolhouse and the women and children in the hamlet's two churches. A subsequent search uncovered no sign of weapons or guerrilla propaganda. At 06:00, officers consulted superiors by radio, then informed the commandos they would be "vaccinating" the inhabitants after breakfast.[1]
In the early afternoon, the Kaibiles separated out the children, and began killing them. They raped women and girls, and ripped the fetuses out of pregnant women. They bashed the smallest children's heads against walls and trees, and killed the older ones with hammer blows to the head. A baby was the first to be killed, by dumping the baby live into a deep 4 meter well, along with the rest of the bodies then after. Then the commandos interrogated the men and women one by one, raped some of the women again, then shot or bashed them with the hammer, and dumped them in the well. The massacre continued throughout 7 December. On the morning of 8 December, as the Kaibiles were preparing to leave, another 15 persons, among them children, arrived in the hamlet. With the well already full, they took the newcomers to a location half an hour away, then shot all but two of them. They kept two teenage girls for the next few days, raping them repeatedly and finally strangling them. Only one person survived this massacre, a small child who managed to escape. [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos_Erres_massacre
