Guatemala court jails former police chief over embassy attack
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Version 0 of 1. A court in Guatemala has sentenced a former police chief to 90 years for an assault on the Spanish embassy in 1980 during a protest by indigenous people, peasants and university students that left 37 people dead. The attack came during the Guatemalan civil war between the government and leftist rebels and their supporters. At least 245,000 people died or disappeared in the war, which lasted from 1960 until 1996, according to a 1999 UN-sponsored report. The court on Monday found Pedro Garcia Arredondo, a former special investigations chief for the national police, guilty of homicide and crimes against humanity for ordering officers to keep anyone from leaving the diplomatic mission as it burned. Among those killed in the blaze was Vicente Menchu, father of 1992 Nobel peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu. Menchu applauded the ruling. “We need to create hope and justice, even if just a drop of it, and this is an example that shows we can go to the justice system and work with it,” she said. The convicted police chief will only have to serve 30 years, however, because that was the maximum possible sentence at the time of the attack. Protesters outside the court yelled “murderer, murderer”. Before the sentence was announced, indigenous people held a Maya ceremony with an altar holding flowers and candles. Protesters from indigenous, student, peasant, labour and other groups had taken over the embassy to call attention to massacres during the civil war. Police surrounded and sealed the facility. Arredondo had proclaimed his innocence. |