NISGUA: Rios Montt press conference

July 13, 2006

Dear NISGUA Activists,

Unfortunately, the international arrest warrants for Rios Montt, Mejia Victores and other military leaders issued by Spain last Friday are receiving very little attention from the media outside of Guatemala.

However, today there were two wire reports (Associate Press and Reuters) covering Rios Montt's press conference in Guatemala yesterday, which are attached below. If these reports are being carried by your local paper, it gives a great opportunity to write a letter to the editor.

Be sure to include your full name, address, and telephone number. Try to keep your letter under 200 words.

Here are some talking points that you can include in a letter. Please adapt them into your own words. If possible, include a local angle and/or mention your own experience with Guatemala.

* The Department of Justice should do everything possible to honor the arrest warrants, freezing any bank accounts or other assets owned by the accused in the U.S. If any of the accused attempt to enter the U.S., they should promptly be arrested and extradited to Spain for trial.

* The U.S. government should insist that Guatemalan authorities ensure the safety of those brave enough to bring charges against the military. The accused have many powerful and dangerous allies in Guatemala, some of whom have already publicly threatened witnesses in the case when the Spanish Investigative Commission visited Guatemala two weeks ago.

* Spanish Judge Pedraz issued the warrants because he's encountering the same frustrations that Guatemalan survivors and human rights activists have dealt with for years: the Guatemalan judicial system is weak and politically biased, unable to stop the impunity that military officials enjoy. Similar charges brought in the domestic courts five years ago have gone nowhere.

* Many Guatemalans do NOT remember Rios Montt's reign very fondly. When he attempted to run for president in 2003, people protested and threw rocks at him on the campaign trail.

* While it is common knowledge in Guatemala that Rios Montt and his administration was responsible for genocide and other serious human rights violations, any concrete legal evidence that the U.S. government has should be shared with the Spanish Courts.

Letters to the editor are often the most widely-read section of newspapers. Timeliness is the bottom line for newspapers, so the sooner you submit your letter, the better.

Let us know if your letter is published - send copies to nisgua@igc.org. Thank you and good luck!

Montt says he was unaware of atrocities

Juan Carlos Llorca
Associated Press

Guatemala City - A former Guatemalan dictator said a Spanish judge's order for his arrest was unfounded and insisted that as president he was not aware of any atrocities committed by military officials during the country's civil war.

"The army followed orders and the law," Efrain Rios Montt told a news conference Wednesday, four days after Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued warrants against him, Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores - also a former dictator - and six military officials on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention.

Human rights groups say Rios Montt and Mejia are responsible for some of the worst atrocities of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which left 200,000 people dead before peace accords were signed in December 1996.

On Wednesday, relatives held funerals for 19 war victims whose bodies were recently exhumed from clandestine graves.

Pedraz's order stems from charges filed in Spanish courts in 1999 by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, whose father was one of 37 people killed in January 1980 when police stormed and set fire to the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala. Pedraz also is investigating the deaths of four Spanish priests by government forces in western Guatemala.

In the arrest warrants issued last week, Pedraz said he encountered "obstructionism" and a lack of cooperation by the accused during a fact-finding trip to Guatemala in June, from which he returned empty-handed.

Rios Montt insisted that he is being accused unfairly by a judge who fails "to remember that there was a war in Guatemala, a guerrilla war in which terrorists destroyed bridges, schools, electric plants and other buildings of the people."

"There were some officials who committed abuses ... the army was not a squad of assassins," he said. "It was men who acted and reacted in defense of the interests of the nation and the people."

Rios Montt described his administration as "a bridge between a black past and a hopeful tomorrow, given that the guerrillas and international terrorism were defeated in Guatemala."

According to a U.N. truth commission, the army was responsible for 626 separate massacres of civilians, mostly Mayan Indians, during the war. About half of those occurred in 1982 and 1983 when Rios Montt was running the country.

Rios Montt said he had no knowledge of the massacres. "I don't believe or disbelieve" reports of atrocities, he added.

Aristides Crespo, head of Rios Montt's political party in Congress, called the judge's legal action "a political lynching by those who were defeated in the war."

Defense lawyers for Rios Montt have argued that Pedraz lacks the authority to hold hearings on events that took place in Guatemala.

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Guatemala ex-dictator denies Spanish rights charges

By Mica Rosenberg

Guatemala City (Reuters) - Guatemalan ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt rejected a Spanish judge's genocide charges as a 'whim' on Wednesday, saying a civil war against leftist rebels had called for tough measures during his bloody rule.

High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz last week called for Rios Montt, his successor Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores and six others to be arrested for genocide, torture, illegal arrest and terrorism in the country's civil war in the 1980s.

Rios Montt ruled during the bloodiest years of the 36-year-long war when the army launched a scorched-earth counter-insurgency campaign against suspected guerrilla sympathisers, wiping entire villages off the map.

Rios Montt denied the accusations as whimsical, while emphasising that he had been given the task of bringing Guatemala back from the brink of chaos.

"I am accused of being a terrorist on a whim, but there was a guerrilla war on in Guatemala," he told reporters. "I got to power when communists had already won and Guatemala was lost."

In 1999, a U.N.-backed truth commission documented more than 600 massacres -- largely committed by the army and its paramilitary fighters -- during a war that left over 200,000 mostly Mayan Indians dead or missing.

Judge Pedraz visited Guatemala last month to investigate war crimes, including a 1980 assault on the Spanish embassy in which 37 people died. But Guatemalan authorities blocked the proceedings by honouring appeals brought by Rios Montt and other ex-leaders and the judge was unable to gather any testimony.

Pedraz left the country on July 1 and issued his arrest order after his return to Madrid.

It requires Guatemalan officials to issue local arrest warrants for the eight men. Rios Montt, however, is still an important political figure in Guatemala and has been able to avoid charges brought against him in the past.

Many Guatemalans still remember him fondly for taking a hard line against guerrillas and common criminals alike as president and he had enough support to run for office in the country's last elections in a failed bid to regain power.

Asked about the army's actions, Rios Montt said: "It wasn't a platoon of assassins. It was a group of men who reacted to defend the interests of the nation and the people."

"It was a guerrilla war which had no specific front," he said. "In that situation ... the army responds to the situation it faces."

He said the army obeyed orders during his rule but also committed abuses of which he had no knowledge at the time.

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Tags: Guatemala, Rios, Montt, Genocide, Torture, Justice, News

Posted by elcanche at July 13, 2006 04:01 PM