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GUATEMALA: WILL JUSTICE PREVAIL? - SUPREME COURT DECISION ON GERARDI
MURDER CASE

Bishop Juan Gerardi, an outspoken defender of human rights in Guatemala,
was bludgeoned to death on April 26, 1998, two days after he released the
REHMI report (the Recovery of Historical Memory Project), which attributed
90% of the more than 200,000 deaths in Guatemala’s 36-year civil war to
military and paramilitary groups. The report is a chilling catalog of the
mechanisms of violence and its impact on Guatemalan society. Among the
findings of that report were that SOA (the School of the Americas, a
United States government terrorist training camp in Georgia) graduates
were responsible for the assassination of anthropologist Myrna Mack, the
cover-up of the murder of U.S. citizen Michael Devine, and the torture and
murder of Efrain Bamaca, husband of U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury.

The report also states that SOA graduate Benedicto Lucas Garcia
masterminded the creation of vigilante groups known as PACs that were
responsible for some of the most horrific violations of the war.
Furthermore, three SOA graduates were top officials in the notorious D-2
intelligence agency, which the report characterizes as having played "a
central role in the conduct of military operations, in massacres,
extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, and torture." It is also
known that SOA graduates held key cabinet positions under the brutal
dictatorships of Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt, and Mejia Victores.

In June 2001, a Guatemala court found three military officers guilty of
having planned his murder; the first time a Guatemalan court had ever
convicted military officials of a political crime. One of those
convicted, Byron Lima Estrada, former head of the notorious G-2 military
intelligence unit, was a School of the Americas graduate.

In October 2002 an appeals court annulled the historic verdict, a decision
that stunned supporters all over the world. The judges ordered a new
trial for the accused, based on their belief that testimony of a key
witness was flawed.

Less than a month later, the Guatemalan Supreme Court (CSJ) suspended the
appeals court’s sentence. Tomorrow, on January 31st, the CSJ will hold a
hearing to decide whether or not the convicted will receive a new trial.
Visit www.soaw.org for updates.

With the verdict now up in the air, human rights workers in Guatemala and
abroad are left wondering what the future holds: will justice prevail or
will impunity and the increasingly violent environment in Guatemala throw
the winning punch?