CJA is lead counsel on the Guatemala Genocide Case before the Spanish National Court. The case was filed in 1999 by the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation and others against former head of state General Efraín Ríos Montt and seven other senior Guatemalan officials charging them with terrorism, genocide, and systematic torture stemming from a number of notorious incidents in the 1980s.  The case is modeled on the Pinochet case – also brought in Spain – in which courts recognized universal jurisdiction over certain human rights crimes.  In 2006, a new legal team led by CJA began working with attorneys from Guatemala, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. to develop evidence on the Mayan genocide.

Update

In October 2007, the Guatemalan Courts denied the final appeal of two defendants: National Police Director Garcia Arredondo and General Guevara Rodriguez.  At that point, extradition proceedings should have moved forward to transfer the defendants to Spain.  Instead, in December 2007 the Guatemalan courts reversed themselves and issued a decision which stated that the arrest and extradition requests issued by the Spanish National Court were invalid. This reversal resulted in strained diplomatic relations between the two nations and outrage from the human rights community.  In January 2008, Judge Pedraz issued a ruling denouncing the lack of cooperation from the Guatemalan authorities. 

CJA and the legal team continued to push the case throughout 2008 and brought over 40 indigenous Guatemalans to Madrid to testify in three separate groups, marking the first time a national court had heard evidence from Mayan survivors on one of the largest genocides of the last century.

CJA, the Myrna Mack Foundation, Impunity Watch, The National Security Archive and U.C. Hastings College of the Law are currently completing work on the Guatemala Evidence Project - a joint effort to map the military and police command structures in Guatemala during the time period of the 20 year civil war. The report will be in Spanish and made available to human rights attorneys working on pending cases in Guatemala, Spain, Belgium and the Inter-American Court.

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

In 2006, CJA joined a criminal complaint filed by Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum and others in Spain against former president Efraín Ríos Montt and other senior Guatemalan officials charging them with terrorism, genocide and systematic torture. Click here for a full list of defendants.

The case is modeled on the Pinochet case which was also brought in Spain because the Spanish courts recognize universal jurisdiction over certain human rights crimes. From 2000 through 2005, the parties engaged in legal battles on jurisdiction and the rights of non-Spanish citizens to bring claims in Spain. Click here for a summary of 1999-2005 case activities.

In a groundbreaking decision, on September 26, 2005, the Constitutional Court reversed a lower court ruling that had dismissed the case and held 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.  As a result, the genocide claims of indigenous Guatemalans were reinstated.

CJA became lead attorney on the case in 2006 and began to work closely with Judge Pedraz to reinvigorate the investigation.  CJA also put together a legal team with attorneys from Guatemala, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. to work on the case.

In July 2006, Judge Pedraz issued arrest warrants for the eight defendants named in the case, including Ríos Montt, and issued an order to freeze the defendants’ assets.  The arrest warrants were accepted by the Guatemala Constitutional Court and extradition proceedings were initiated. In March 2007, CJA filed an amended complaint on behalf of two new clients, Jesus Tecú Osorio and Juan Manuel Jeronimo, both survivors of 1982 massacres carried out by the Guatemalan army in the Baja Verapaz area. 

Unexpectedly, in December 2007, the Guatemalan high court reversed itself and held that the arrest warrants and extradition requests were invalid.  As a result, Judge Pedraz issued an international call to invite witnesses to travel to Madrid to present evidence on the genocide.  CJA had previously received permission from the court to bring 40 individual witnesses to testify in Spain in three separate groups due to safety concerns.  After the judge's call, many more witnesses, including Rigoberta Menchú Tum , traveled to Madrid to give evidence.

CJA, as lead counsel, organized three delegations of witnesses.  The first group testified in January 2008 and included fifteen survivors and three experts.  The presentation of the testimony was a historic moment for the Mayan survivors as it represented the first time a national court had allowed them to present evidence of the campaign of torture, rape and killing perpetrated against their communities in the early 1980’s. While most of the witnesses’ identities were kept confidential due to security concerns, CJA clients Jesus Tecú Osorio and Juan Manuel Jeronimo testified publicly.

The second group testified in May 2008 and included five survivors and anthropologists Ricardo Falla Sanchez, Charles Hale and Beatriz Manz. A third round of testimony, including six survivors and one expert, took place in Madrid in October 2008.