Guatemala massacre suspect faces charges in Calif

[Judi Lynn]

Guatemala massacre suspect faces charges in Calif
January 24, 2011 4:48 PM

RIVERSIDE, Calif.

A Southern California martial arts instructor suspected of being involved in a massacre during a 1982 civil war in Guatemala has been arrested in Canada and is awaiting extradition to the U.S.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports Monday that Jorge Sosa, a former member of a special Guatemalan military unit called the "Kaibiles," was indicted in September in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana for immigration crimes.

Court papers say Sosa was the commanding officer of a special military patrol that massacred villagers in Dos Erres on Dec. 7, 1982, while on a mission to recover weapons stolen by a guerrilla group.

More: http://www.wchstv.com/newsroom/nnews/news18.shtml

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Earlier story from July, 2010:

Thursday, July 08, 2010
Ex-Guatemalan soldier confesses to massacre killings

The Dos Erres massacre in 1982 was one of the worst mass killings during the Guatemalan civil war. Over three days a group of seventeen elite soldiers ransacked a village and callously murdered 251 men, women, and children. Some bodies were ditched in the village well while several survivors were killed in bushes and roads. For nearly three decades one of the troops accused of perpetrating the bloodbath lived in impunity. That is, until Wednesday when Gilberto Jordán was finally held accountable for his actions.

The former elite soldier for the Guatemalan army confessed in a federal court that he was one of the perpetrators of the Dos Erres massacre. Jordán pled guilty in court after he falsely denied on his citizenship papers that he was part of the murder. “Members of the special patrol also forcibly raped many of the women and girls at Dos Erres before killing them,” read an affidavit from Jordán that was submitted as part of a plea deal with immigration officials.

Jordán will be sentenced in September and he faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and revocation of his naturalized citizenship. For some activists representing victims of the Dos Erres massacre, however, justice would best be served in Guatemala:

"We've asked the Attorney General's office to have him extradited to face human rights charges here for the killings of 250 men, women and children, rape and torture," Aura Elena Farfan, director of the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala, or FAMDEGUA, told Reuters.

http://ourlatinamerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/ex-guatemalan-soldier-confesses-to.html

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In December 1982, during the de facto administration of Ríos Montt, approximately 300 residents of Dos Erres, Libertad, Petén were murdered by the Guatemalan military’s special Kaibil Unit. Of those killed 113 were children under the age of 14. The soldiers began with babies, throwing them down wells in the town. Next, the women and children were gathered in the town’s churches, where the women were raped and the children were beaten. The children were eventually thrown, some still alive, into wells. After the women and children, the men were beaten to death and their bodies were thrown into a well.

After having children of their own, two Kaibiles confessed to the massacre and named the other officers involved. The case was first filed by the Association of Families of the Detained and 'Disappeared' of Guatemala (FAMDEGUA) in 1994 and the site of the massacre was exhumed and the remains of 171 people were recovered. The case was highlighted in the Historical Clarification Commission report and was introduced to the Inter-American Court by FAMDEGUA in 1996. In 2001, an agreement was reached in which the state, under President Portillo, recognized the massacre; money and psychiatric help were given to the survivors and a monument was constructed in the town. In December 2001, Q14 million (around $1.7 million) was paid to the families of the victims.

In 2005, the Guatemala Supreme Court ruled to drop the charges against the officers, claiming that it could not act under the National Reconciliation Law that exempts members of the armed forces and those under their command from prosecution to for unspecified crimes carried during the conflict. The court stated that the law annulled actions taken after its passage in 1996. In January 2010, the Inter American Court ruled that the state had obstructed the case and ordered the case and arrest warrants reactivated. In February two Kaibiles were arrested in connection with the massacre. Nearly 30 years since the massacre no military officers have been convicted for the murders committed.

http://www.ghrc-usa.org/Resources/news/important_cases.htm

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Declassified U.S. Documents on Kaibiles and the Dos Erres Massacre
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB316/index.htm

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