_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Guatemala_______________
Four guilty on murder charges
Conviction ends three-year investigation
On June 8, after a month-long trial, a court in Guatemala convicted three soldiers and a priest in the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi Conedera, and ordered a criminal probe into the possible involvement of three other military officials.
Bishop Gerardi was murdered two days after releasing a human rights report that blamed most of the 200,000 deaths in the country’s 36-year civil war on the military and its paramilitary allies. The three-year investigation into that killing had been slowed by many obstacles, including death threats against investigating magistrates, judges, and witnesses. Human-rights campaigner Helen Mack called the court’s verdict “courageous,” adding: “This is a strong blow against impunity.”
Col. Disrael Lima Estrada was found guilty of homicide and sentenced to 30 years. Prosecutors said the former chief of military intelligence masterminded the killing to keep the bishop from testifying in possible trials over wartime atrocities. Guilty on the same charges were his son, Capt. Byron Lima Oliva, and Jose Obdulio Villanueva, both former members of the presidential guard. Both were sentenced to 30 years, with Lima given an additional two-year sentence for a false-documents charge.
The tribunal found Bishop Gerardi’s assistant, Father Mario Orantes, guilty of giving the killers access to and information on the 75-year-old bishop. The priest was sentenced to serve 20 years. Bishop Gerardi’s cook, Margarita Lopez, was found innocent of similar charges.
The court also ordered an investigation of three other officers of the presidential guard—a colonel, a major, and a captain. “The second part of this case is still to come, finding out who were the masterminds and killers in this crime,” said Miguel Angel Sandoval of the Movement for Justice and Democracy.
Attorneys representing the Church hierarchy had asked the judges to order a probe of higher officials. The bishops’ representatives said that they suspected these officials of having been involved in preparations for the slaying. The witnesses who were called before the court during the course of the trial included former President Alvaro Arzu, who ruled the country from 1985 to 2000. Arzu was called as a witness since two of the three soldiers accused of the murder were part of the Presidential Security Corps. Arzu—who had originally declined to give his testimony, citing the immunity he now enjoys as a legislator, but later changed his mind and voluntarily appeared—revealed that “he knew Byron Lima, because he was part of his security team, but his only connection with the case is that, as president, he was immediately informed about the crime.”