_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Guatemala_______________
Prosecutor flees
Threatened after convictions in bishop’s death
The lead prosecutor in the case that led to the conviction of three soldiers and a priest for the murder of a Catholic bishop has fled Guatemala in fear of his life.
Leopoldo Zeissig left the Central American country with his family after he received death threats, assistant prosecutor Anibal Sanchez said. “We are surprised and uncertain about Leopoldo’s sudden departure,” she added. But Zeissig had spoken out before his departure, telling reporters that the death threats he and other prosecutors received were part of a “psychological strategy” designed to intimidate law-enforcement officials.
Two of the three judges in the case and one other prosecutor have also fled after receiving repeated threats. However, one of the judges, Iris Barrios, later returned from exile in Spain and said she planned to return to work.
Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi Conedera was killed at his home in April 1998, two days after releasing a human-rights report that blamed the military for most of the 200,000 deaths in the country’s 36-year civil war. Based on the number of threats against investigators, prosecutors, judges, and witnesses before and during the trial, human-rights workers blamed groups allied with the military for trying to suppress the truth about the bishop’s murder.
UN insists on abortion access
Criticism for country’s stance
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has issued a demand that Guatemala legalize abortion.
In its recommendations to Guatemala the committee said the Central American country “must guarantee the right to life of pregnant women who decide to interrupt their pregnancies.” The committee also ordered the country to provide pregnant women with “the information and the means necessary to guarantee these rights.” Finally it said that Guatemala must protect the right to life of women by “amending the law to establish exceptions to the general prohibition against all abortion, except where the mother is in danger of death.”
The committee complained that the criminalization of abortion “creates serious problems, mainly in light of uncontested information on the high incidence of maternal mortality, of clandestine abortions, and the lack of information on family planning.”
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