Retired Colonel Sentenced to 53 Years in Ground-Breaking War

UNCLAS GUATEMALA 001023 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PHUM PGOV KDEM KJUS GT SUBJECT: Retired Colonel Sentenced to 53 Years in Ground-Breaking War Crimes Trial REF: REF A): GUATEMALA 1005; REF B): GUATEMALA 890 ¶1. (U) Summary: On December 3, for the first time in Guatemala's history, a former high-ranking army officer was convicted for directly participating in war crimes that occurred during the country's 36 year-long armed internal conflict. Retired Colonel Marco Antonio Sanchez Samayoa, along with three military commissioners (civilian army informants),were each sentenced to 53 years in prison for their respective roles in the 1981 forced disappearance of eight indigenous villagers from El Jute, an impoverished town in the south-eastern department of Chiquimula. Ambassador McFarland attended the trial on two occasions - the first on Thanksgiving Day and later when sentence was passed - to emphasize the importance the case holds for Guatemala in addressing impunity and reconciliation. His presence at the trial also generated significant newspaper and television coverage. The guilty verdict was a major victory for the country's human rights community - in addition to establishing a precedent by convicting a retired high-ranking officer, the presiding tribunal also ordered a wider investigation of the roles former Defense Minister Angel Anibal Guevara and other high-ranking officers and soldiers may have played in the disappearance. End Summary. ¶2. (U) At the time the eight villagers disappeared in October of 1981, Sanchez commanded the Zacapa army base. The three co-defendants in the case - Jose Domingo Ruiz, Gabriel Alvarez Ramos and Salomon Maldonado Rios - served as military commissioners in the area under Sanchez's command. While many of them were prior soldiers, military commissioners were actually civilians who served as informants to the army. At the trial that ended on December 3, the tribunal found that three commissioners were responsible for forcibly taking eight family members from the village of El Jute to the army base. It also found that Sanchez knew about their illegal detention. The tribunal subsequently sentenced all four to forty years in prison for forced disappearance - which the Constitutional Court ruled earlier this year is a crime against humanity - and an additional thirteen years for illegal detention. The court also ordered the initiation of an investigation against ex-Defense Minister Angel Anibal Guevar, ex-Chief of Staff Benedicto Luca Garcia, and other former officers �0A;and soldiers who were assigned to the Zacapa base in 1981. ¶3. (SBU) On the same day the sentence was passed, Ambassador McFarland returned to Chiquimula for the second time since his visit a week earlier on Thanksgiving (REF A) to reiterate the USG's commitment to justice and human rights and the importance the case holds for addressing impunity and reconciliation. One retired military officer attending the trial expressed his deep annoyance with the Ambassador for attending the trial. This same retired officer was among several army veterans, members of AVEMILGUA, the association of military veterans of Guatemala, who took pictures of witnesses and family members also attending the trial, presumably in an attempt to intimidate them. Before making the three-hour trip back to Guatemala City, the Ambassador visited the village of El Jute, where he met with a number of family members of the victims, including two women who had been raped in the operation that led to the disappearances of the eight villagers. The Attorney General's Office, a number of human rights groups, and community members thanked the Ambassador for supporting their efforts, and for assisting their safety (witnesses say they have been threatened) by raising the case's profile. The Ambassador's presence at the trial and in El Jute received extensive newspaper and television coverage. ¶4. (SBU) Comment: Sanchez's conviction comes three months after a similar trial in the department of Chimaltenango. In that case, former military commissioner Felipe Cusanero was sentenced to 150 years for his role in the forced disappearances of six members of the Kaqchiquel Mayan indigenous group between 1982 and 1984 (Ref B). The precedent established by Cusanero's conviction likely made it easier for the tribunal in Chiquimula to find Colonel Sanchez and the three military commissioners there guilty for the same crime. Sanchez's conviction, in turn, represents the first time a former high-ranking military officer has been convicted for direct participation in a war crime (as opposed to being the intellectual author of a war crime). In 2002, a tribunal sentenced Colonel Juan Valencia Osorio to 30 years in prison for ordering the 1990 assassination of anthropologist Myrna Mack. Osorio disappeared while under house arrest and remains at large. No other high-ranking officers have been convicted of directly participating in war crimes committed over the course of Guatemala's 36-year long armed internal conflict. As many as 45,000 Guatemalans were forcibly disappeared during a conflict that ultimately took some 200,000 lives. ¶5. (SBU) Guatemala's human rights community, not surprisingly, has hailed the ground-breaking conviction. Mario Polanco, executive director of the NGO Mutual Support Group, Guatemala's oldest existing human-rights group, told the press that the tribunal's ruling is as an "historic decision because it is the first time a colonel was sentenced for a crime against humanity, and it is the beginning of the struggle against impunity." In a meeting with post's human rights officer the day before the sentence was announced, Mario Minera, the director of the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights, said that for the first time the human rights community has found an Attorney General's Office with which it can work. While the tribunal's ruling against Sanchez and the three military commissioners will no doubt be appealed, their convictions in the meantime will likely accelerate the pace of other cases of forced disappearance that have been filed in the Guatemalan judicial system in the years since the conflict ended in 1996 or that will be filed in the future. End Comment. MCFARLAND