Guatemala ex-army chief Hector Lopez Fuentes dies

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-34570301

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The former head of the army in Guatemala, Gen Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, has died aged 85.

Gen Lopez Fuentes was arrested four years ago on charges of genocide committed in the early 1980s, during Guatemala's civil war.

He was accused of ordering the killing of more than 300 indigenous Maya civilians in Ixil during the rule of Gen Efrain Rios Montt.

But in 2012 he was declared mentally and physically unfit to stand trial.

Legal battle

Gen Lopez Fuentes only spent 16 days in jail before being transferred to a military hospital, where he lived for the past four years before his death on Sunday of natural causes.

He was in charge of the army during one of the most brutal periods of the 36-year civil war that wracked Guatemala from 1960 to 1996.

Prosecutors accused him of ordering 12 massacres in which 317 people died in the northern Quiche region.

They said he was responsible for a plan dubbed Victory 82, which aimed to kill Ixil indigenous groups.

The armed forces accused the indigenous groups of offering support to left-wing rebels who opposed military rule.

However, those killed in the massacres included women and children, and witnesses recounted how whole villages were razed to the ground.

The military ruler at the time, Gen Rios Montt, was sentenced to 80 years in prison for genocide in 2013.

However, a high court then threw out the charges on procedural grounds and ordered a retrial.

The retrial has been scheduled for January 2016.

It will be held behind closed doors after experts said Gen Rios Montt had dementia and could not face a public trial.