Guatemalan lawyer travels to US to press Rios Montt genocide conviction [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Guatemalan lawyer travels to US to press Rios Montt genocide conviction

Prosecutor representing Ixil minority group hopes pan-American court can reinstate 80-year sentence that was quashed in May

Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent
The Guardian, Monday 4 November 2013 12.16 EST

The disrupted prosecution for genocide of the former Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Rios Montt will move onto the international stage this week when victims' relatives and their lawyers converge on Washington.

The 86-year-old former military ruler of the central American state was found guilty by a domestic court in May of ordering the massacre of 1,771 members of the Mayan Ixil people during Guatemala's civil war in the early 1980s. But 11 days later the country's constitutional court overturned the conviction and 80-year prison sentence imposed on him, throwing the complex legal process into disarray.

Montt, who remains under house arrest, was the first former head of state to have been found guilty of genocide in his country's own courts. That judgment is now effectively suspended after the constitutional court ruled the trial should restart from a late stage in the evidence.

Edgar Pérez, the lead Guatemalan prosecutor, will join members of the Ixil people to present a petition at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington seeking to enforce the conviction through international courts.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/guatemala-jose-efrain-rios-montt-genocide