Background

According to the UN-sponsored Commission on Historical Clarification (CEH), over 200,000 people were killed or disappeared between 1960 and 1996 in Guatemala. The Guatemalan Army, and forces that worked with the army, indiscriminately targeted indigenous communities, labor leaders, students, religious people and other innocent civilians under the pretext that they supported anti-government guerrilla groups.

During the worst period of violence in 1982 -1983, the army and its counter-insurgency force (whose members defined themselves as “killing machines”), began a systematic campaign of repression against the Mayan Indians, who they claimed were part of a communist plot against the government.  Working methodically across the Mayan region, the army and its paramilitary teams, including “civil patrols” of forcibly conscripted local men, attacked and destroyed an estimated 440 Mayan villages.   

This two year period became known as the “Silent Holocaust.”  Extreme torture became commonplace as a method of coercion and intimidation.  In the words of the 1999 CEH report on the civil war:

The Army's perception of Mayan communities as natural allies of the guerrillas contributed to increasing and aggravating the human rights violations perpetrated against them, demonstrating an aggressive racist component of extreme cruelty that led to extermination en masse of defenseless Mayan communities, including children, women and the elderly, through methods whose cruelty has outraged the moral conscience of the civilized world.

The Guatemalan Genocide Case Before the Spanish National Court

Rigoberta Menchú Tum, a Qu’iche Indian woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work defending the rights of indigenous peoples, lost her entire family at the hands of the Guatemalan military and paramilitary groups acting with the consent of the government.

In December 1999, in the wake of the arrest in London of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Ms. Menchú and a group of Spanish and Guatemalan non-governmental organizations filed a suit in the Spanish National Court (SNC) against several senior Guatemalan government officials including former heads of state, General Efraín Ríos Montt and Romeo Lucas Garcia, and former Minister of the Interior Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz.  The complaint charged the defendants with terrorism, genocide, and systematic torture stemming from a number of notorious incidents including Rigoberta Menchú’s personal story.  Ms. Menchú’s mother and brother were tortured and killed by the army.  Her father died when he was burned alive, along with 38 other people, by members of the army at the Spanish Embassy in 1982. 

Ms. Menchú is a private prosecutor in the case, and other Guatemalan and Spanish organizations joined as popular prosecutors.  Due to CJA’s record of success on other Central America human rights cases, the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation (RMF) requested that CJA International Attorney Almudena Bernabeu join the complaint as a private prosecutor. Ms. Bernabeu joined the complaint with Spanish co-counsel Manuel Olle Sesé, an expert in universal jurisdiction matters, on behalf of torture survivors of Spanish nationality in December 2004.

After more than a year of investigation, CJA attorneys working in collaboration with RMF located Alvarez Ruiz in Mexico. Although a warrant was properly issued for his arrest by the Spanish authorities, Mexican officials allowed Alvarez Ruiz to escape. He subsequently fled the country, and CJA and RMF are now investigating his current whereabouts.

Procedural History

After the case was initiated, the Public Prosecutor filed a motion to dismiss the action claiming that the plaintiffs had not adequately exhausted their legal remedies in Guatemala.  The plaintiffs argued that justice in Guatemala was effectively denied because victims and lawyers were threatened and courts refused to entertain or pursue suits.

In a temporary setback for the case, an en banc criminal chamber of the Spanish National Court ruled on December 13, 2000 in favor of the Public Prosecutor.  The various plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court in March 2001.  

On February 25, 2003 the Spanish Supreme Court, in an 8-7 decision, partially overturned the National Court’s decision.  The Supreme Court found that the only cases that could proceed were the ones which showed a close tie to Spain.  The ruling thus allowed investigations for the torture and killing of Spanish citizens in Guatemala but threw out the claims of the Mayan plaintiffs.  

In March 2003, the plaintiffs appealed this decision to the highest appellate court in Spain, the Spanish Constitutional Court.

In a groundbreaking decision, on September 26, 2005 the Constitutional Court reversed the Supreme Court's decision, saying that it was the legislators’ intention to make Spain a country that observes the principles of “universal jurisdiction” for certain egregious crimes.  The decision stated that Spanish Courts will have jurisdiction over crimes of international importance -- crimes prosecutable in any jurisdiction as prescribed by international treaties including the Geneva Conventions -- regardless of the nationality of the victims and perpetrators.  Such crimes include torture, crimes against humanity and genocide.