Efrain Rios Montt, Guatemala Ex-Dictator, Gets Second Genocide Charge

GUATEMALA CITY -- A judge lodged a second genocide charge against a former Guatemalan dictator on Monday accusing him in the massacre of more than 200 villagers.

The charge came just months after a similar order to try ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt for the killings of 1,700 Indians.

Judge Carol Patricia Flores ruled prosecutors presented sufficient evidence to warrant a trial on the new charge.

In the latest case, prosecutors allege Rios Montt was responsible for a military operation that killed 201 farmers in the northern hamlet of Dos Erres.

Rios Montt already is facing a genocide trial after being charged in January for allegedly causing the displacement of 29,000 Indians and the killings of 1,771 Mayans. His lawyers are seeking to block the trial, arguing an amnesty law covers Rios Montt, who ruled Guatemala in 1982-83.

Asked if he had anything to declare at a hearing on the new charge, the 85-year-old former general said he was innocent.

"It is under military law, your honor, that I declare I am innocent," Rios Montt said in a courtroom crowded with victims' relatives and human rights activists.

Many in the audience clapped when the judge ordered that Rios Montt be tried on the latest charge.

On Dec. 7, 1982, soldiers from the elite special forces Kaibil unit attacked the community of Dos Erres, looking for missing weapons that guerrilla groups operating in the region had stolen from troops days earlier. They accused the farmers of collaborating with the rebels at the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war.

The soldiers raped and killed women and girls and forced hundreds of people to flee, according to court filings. Dozens of bodies were exhumed from a well in the 1990s, and experts determined at least 67 were children under the age of 12.

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.

Rios Montt, who took power in a 1982 coup and was toppled the following year, became in January the first former president to be charged with genocide by a Latin American court. He had held immunity from prosecution while a member of Congress for 15 years, but after losing his seat he was put under house arrest, where he remains.

Advocates in Guatemala have said that charging Rios Montt for war crimes committed during his regime could stand as a precedent in the cases of two other former generals accused alongside Rios Montt in the first genocide case and of dozens of other lower-ranking military men accused of participating in atrocities.

Earlier on HuffPost:

Comments

[compajuan049]

03:54 PM on 07/05/2012

I also got sick to my stomach of how the propiciators of the death squads in both Guatemala and El Salvador claimed to be of "la clase productiva" the ill defined "productive class" who claimed of "also being victims of the strikes, the roadblocks, the student protests, the media slandering, guerilla attacks and kidnappingd, (also a death of some South African diplomat was mentioned by the leader of the death squads in El Salvador, Roberto D'aubisson) as "proof" that this wasn't a "one sided war" ., Did they themselves buy into such nonsense??

[compajuan049]

01:58 PM on 07/05/2012

The "born again" craze in Central America and the actions of this mass murderer was a major step in why I got sickened by any such religious fervor. Here is a little "Postalita" for people like that: "Mankind has never committed so much evil and atrocity with such ferocious glee than when he does so with Religious conviction"

[lokipuck]

07:07 AM on 06/29/2012

Time to charge OUR OWN war criminals.

[elgordo111]

01:50 PM on 05/23/2012

The word genocide has lost all its meaning. If the Guatemalan army had been trying to exterminate the Mayas, it would have had to kill 200,000 people a year over the course of the war. It is absurd to charge Rios Montt with genocide. Everyone notes that over the course of the civil war mostly Mayan indians were killed. Of course that is the case, most of the country is Mayan indian. When the war began, they killed middle-class ladinos. Was it genocide then? Percentage wise, it was closer to genocide than the killing of indians. Middle-class ladinos were (and unfortunately still are) a minute percentage of Guatemalans. The war was fought at the behest, encouragement and initial funding of the US. Every drop of blood, every dead child, every rape, mutilation and murder are the fault of (perhaps well-meaning) american politicians, starting with Eisenhower.

[Ingrid L Marchus]

01:00 AM on 05/24/2012

ladinos to start with is a misnomer.... mestizos is the correct word... it was genocide... as the numbers are much higher however the cover up and his continuous power he has had through his friends and family is atrocious and continues... and i would say it is not absurd to charge him with what he did he did kill Guatemalans period... they did and they killed middle class the intellectuals, students, Catholics pretty much anyone doing social work... they killed Guatemalans period, it has always been genocide....it's too bad Guatemala follows the distinction and classification of ethnic and racial groups like here This effer killed and had many killed who went contra his ideology and religious views... killing anyone irrespective of their racial make up is horrendous and the fact that he killed so many of his citizens PERIOD it is correct to call it genocide and the meaning has not been lost.... it's been clarified lets hope the outcome is a good one considering who's in power was probably a protege of his...and Eisenhower and everyone after him have played a dirty hand in this GENOCIDE.... a stagnation of growth and an ever plunging plague of economic unrest and social deterioration....

[elgordo111]

03:16 PM on 05/25/2012

Don't tell me what I should call myself. Your self-righteousness is nauseating. Soy ladino y que?

[JeanGenetborhood]

05:47 PM on 05/22/2012

Pretty nuts that he's lived to be 85 as it is.

[Ingrid L Marchus]

01:01 AM on 05/24/2012

yerba mala nunca muera, however there is hope no hay mal que dure cien anos ni cuerpo que lo ajuante ..... this to shall pass....

[Gcock10]

02:49 PM on 05/22/2012

LOL
200 people?
Check out what BRITAIN did to Biafrans in 1967-1970, through the MUSLIM Northern Nigeria.
Just google BIAFRA and read to your heart's content.
Has anyone been charged with GENOCIDE YET? NYET.

[Ingrid L Marchus]

12:42 AM on 05/24/2012

200,000 and that;s a conservative number...... he alone did not do it alone but he's a good one to start with.....

[lejn42]

01:16 PM on 05/22/2012

Rios Montt has revealed the mad dog mentality that lies at the heart of evangelical Christians, of which he is one.

[Ingrid L Marchus]

12:44 AM on 05/24/2012

VERY TRUE......your LATINO TEAPARTY starter..... he was such a narcissist that he would have himself preach for three hrs everyday so that people could hear him....

[pittelli]

11:39 AM on 05/22/2012

This guy was supported by the U.S. and the CIA (he even trained at the School of the Americas) and was friends with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. The U.S. only cares about dictators and genocide when it serves their purpose. If they are putting him on trial, then they should posthumously put Ronald Reagan on trial for backing and supporting his actions.

[southrange]

12:23 PM on 05/22/2012

You are right that the US supported this thug and our government had to know what was happening in Guatamala. Such a beautiful country and I have found its citizens, especially the decendants of the Maya to be peace loving, warm people who just want to live their lives.

[Ingrid L Marchus]

12:47 AM on 05/24/2012

yep, and that other freak as well Billy Graham

[parabq]

10:02 AM on 05/22/2012

This guy needs to be in prison his last days !!!!