Retired Guatemalan colonel Juan Ovalle Salazar has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his involvement in the massacre of 25 Indigenous people, the majority of whom were children, over four decades ago during a brutal period of Guatemala’s conflict. Judge Walter Mazariegos delivered the sentence at a court in Guatemala City, where Ovalle was present but remained silent. His lawyers were not immediately available for comment. The judge stated that Ovalle has 10 days from September 5th to appeal the sentence.
During the 17-month rule of General Efrain Rios Montt, the bloodiest period of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, the massacre of the 25 Maya Achi individuals, including 17 children, occurred on July 29, 1982, in a mountain hamlet called Rancho Bejuco, located north of the capital.
Although Rios Montt was initially convicted of genocide in 2013, this verdict was later overturned by a higher court. Prosecutors alleged that Ovalle ordered the massacre as some residents of Rancho Bejuco refused to join civil self-defense patrols established by the military at the time to exert control over the population.
Six of the defendants were members of the self-defense patrol, known as PAC, while the remaining two were military commissioners responsible for coordinating operations between the army and PAC. The prosecution argued that the eight individuals were acting under Ovalle’s orders, and the judge justified the acquittal by stating that they would have been killed had they not complied.
However, Lucia Xiloj, a lawyer representing the victims’ families, stated that they would appeal the acquittals, believing that all defendants should have been found guilty because they were part of the military structure.
Ovalle was arrested in 2016 and also faces charges related to another massacre in 1982, when 64 people were killed in Pambach. Despite community demands for progress, this case has been ongoing without resolution. Survivors and relatives of victims have campaigned for justice in several cases stemming from Guatemala’s prolonged civil war.
The exhumation of bodies from the Rancho Bejuco massacre commenced in 1999, and the other eight defendants were arrested in February of the prior year. After 16 months, the trial finally began.
(Reporting by Enrique Garcia in Guatemala City; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Credit: The Star : News Feed
