Guatemala police files on abuses found - ombudsman

[Eugene]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16190676.htm

Guatemala police files on abuses found - ombudsman
17 Jul 2005 01:08:45 GMT
Source: Reuters

GUATEMALA CITY, July 16 (Reuters) - Some 30,000 police files have
been unearthed and confirm that human rights abuses took place in the
1980s at the height of the country's civil war, Guatemala's human
rights ombudsman said on Saturday.

The documents, discovered in archives of the now defunct National
Police, contain information about disappearances in the 36-year civil
war during which rights groups estimate 200,000 people died and
50,000 vanished, ombudsman Sergio Morales said.

"This is one of the most important discoveries in recent times," he
told local radio.

Security forces are accused of carrying out illegal detentions,
disappearances, summary executions, kidnappings and torture during
the war, which ended in 1996 with peace accords between the
government and leftist insurgents.

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