Guatemala’s Rios Montt Genocide Prosecution: The Legal Disarray Continues
Guatemala’s Rios Montt Genocide Prosecution: The Legal Disarray Continues
June 18, 2013 by Emi MacLean
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There is no longer much expectation that any new trial will re-start soon. Soon after the Constitutional Court’s judgment, the initial trial court was forced to disqualify itself, having already issued an opinion in the case. A new trial court was eventually assigned, but has indicated it has its plate full until April 2014.
Even with a new trial court assigned, the procedural effects of the Constitutional Court’s decision are still unclear, and will likely continue to be until further pronouncements from the new trial court, or a higher court. Any decision to rehear the evidence raises the possible of a re-victimization of the witnesses, as well as exposing them to the potential safety risk of having to testify again. Edgar Perez, attorney for one of the civil parties, has described the Guatemalan judicial system as in crisis, and he and has said that the Constitutional Court still needs to provide guidance if the case is to restart.
Adding to the uncertainty, the Constitutional Court is considering various petitions seeking the former de facto president’s amnesty, with hearings on May 29 and June 6. The Constitutional Court said on June 12 that it in considering three pending petitions seeking an amnesty for Rios Montt. The defense asserts that a 1986 general amnesty—issued by General Humberto Mejia Victores, the dictator who succeeded Rios Montt—prevents the prosecution despite the subsequent revocation of the decree during the peace accords, and its incompatibility with international law. Rios Montt argues that the subsequent rejection of the amnesty cannot retroactively take this “right” away from him, and that any international law that suggests otherwise is either wholly irrelevant or inapplicable in this instance.
The prosecution and the civil parties strongly contest these assertions. A domestic law excludes explicitly from any amnesty the crimes of genocide, torture, forced disappearance, and other international crimes—a sound rejection of the 1986 general amnesty. Further, Guatemala had ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention at the time of the Mejia Victores amnesty, and the country’s national criminal code already defined genocide and crimes against humanity. International law prohibits so-called “self-amnesties”; amnesties or other prescription of genocide, crimes against humanity and other international crimes; and any amnesty which would limit the victims’ rights to an effective remedy or the truth. Thus, according to the prosecution and civil parties (as well as the UN Committee Against Torture, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, among others), the 1986 amnesty was never valid in the first place.
More:
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/guatemalas-rios-montt-genocide-prosecution-legal-disarray-continues
