Guatemala Ex-Dictator to Stand Trial on Genocide [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Guatemala Ex-Dictator to Stand Trial on Genocide
By SONIA PEREZ-DIAZ Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY January 28, 2013 (AP)

A former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's civil war will stand trial on charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians, a judge ruled Monday.

Human rights advocates have said that the prosecution of Jose Efrain Rios Montt would be an important symbolic victory for the victims of one of the most horrific of the conflicts that devastated Central America during the last decades of the Cold War.

He is the first former president to be charged with genocide by a Latin American court.

Guatemala's leaders have been criticized for years for their inability or unwillingness to prosecute government forces and allied paramilitaries accused of marching into Mayan villages, carrying out rapes and torture, and slaughtering women, children and unarmed men in a "scorched earth" campaign aimed at eliminating the support for a left-wing guerrilla movement.

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During the 1960-96 civil war, more than 200,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, were killed or went missing and entire villages were exterminated, according to the United Nations.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/guatemala-dictator-stand-trial-genocide-18337699