ICE Arrests Former Kaibiles Linked to Dos Erres Massacre in Guatemala
ICE Arrests Former Kaibiles Linked to Dos Erres Massacre in Guatemala
Published 10 January 2017
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Jose Mardoqueo Ortiz Morales, 54, was picked up last week in Maryland by Homeland Security Agents special agents. He was a legal permanent resident at the time of his arrest, an official report says.
Ortiz Morales is a former member of an elite Guatemalan army unit known as the Kaibiles and is wanted in Guatemala on criminal charges for murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for his role in the Dos Erres massacre in which approximately 300 residents were killed.
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The bloody massacre occurred in December 1982 at the height of the country's 36-year civil war during the de facto administration of former dictator and ally to fomer U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Efrain Rios Montt.
The slaughter was part of Rios Montt's genocidal scorched-earth campaign against the country's Indigenous population. Soldiers entered the village and tortured the men, raped the women, and killed everyone including 113 children.
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Federal Agents Arrest a Former Guatemalan Soldier Charged With Massacring Civilians
The Maryland resident has been linked to a 1982 attack on the village of Dos Erres in Guatemala that led to the deaths of about 250 children, women and unarmed men.
by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, Jan. 10, 2017, 4:01 p.m.
Advancing an investigation that has spanned two continents and three decades, U.S. federal agents have arrested a Guatemalan immigrant suspected of involvement in the massacre of about 250 villagers in 1982 during Guatemala’s civil war.
Jose Mardoqueo Ortiz Morales, 54, was arrested at his home in Hyattsville, Maryland, last Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Tuesday. Ortiz is a legal permanent resident of the United States who worked in a mail room at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, authorities said. He faces charges in U.S. immigration court and potential deportation to Guatemala to stand trial for one of the worst massacres in Latin American history, the officials said.
Ortiz becomes the fifth suspect arrested in the United States for the slaughter of men, women and children in the hamlet of Dos Erres in northern Guatemala more than three decades ago. Five veterans of an elite Guatemalan commando force known as the “kaibiles” have been convicted by courts in Guatemala on charges arising from massacre. But six others have eluded capture, some of them aided by Guatemalan security forces whose power has impeded the quest for justice, according to Guatemalan and U.S. investigators.
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During the Dos Erres massacre in December of 1982, the commandos stormed the remote jungle hamlet and unleashed a two-day rampage of rape, torture and murder. Witnesses identified Ortiz as one of the soldiers who blindfolded the victims, interrogated them, hit them with a sledgehammer and dumped them into a well in the center of the village, according to Guatemalan and U.S. court documents. Ortiz was a corporal in the 20-man unit of battle-hardened instructors in the commando academy, according to the documents.
More:
https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-agents-arrest-former-guatemalan-soldier-massacring-civilians
[center] 
Jose Mardoqueo Ortiz Morales
Efraín Ríos Montt, bloodthirsty Guatemalan dictator,
whose admin. ordered the scorched earth policy,
offering ' frijoles y fusiles' (guns or beans)
( "If you are with us, we'll feed you, if not, we'll kill you"
with his staunch US American ally, Ronald Reagan
