Guatemala, once a leader in war-crime prosecutions, at a standstill?

Tracy Wilkinson takes a look at Guatemala, once a leader in war-crime prosecutions, at a standstill for the Los Angeles Times. In it, he looks at what has happened to Claudia Paz y Paz and Yassmin Barrios since the groundbreaking trial of Efrain Rios Montt in 2013.

Paz y Paz was removed from her job a few months early under pretty shady circumstances. She then did not make the final cut on the list presented to President Otto Perez Molina to select the next and current attorney general. After a shady selection process, the nomination went to Thelma Aldana, a woman that CICIG had declared unfit for the Supreme Court in 2009.

And what of the judge who presided over the Rios Montt trial?

Then Yassmin Barrios, the judge who presided over the high-profile Rios Montt trial, faced the wrath of a conservative legal establishment that never wanted to see the case in court. She now handles more mundane crimes, from a small office in a nondescript judiciary building in Guatemala City.

"My ideals have not changed," Barrios said defiantly in an interview, as her bodyguards watched a soccer match on TV outside her office. "I still want justice for this society."

The treatment of Paz y Paz and Barrios during and after the trial have set back the cause of justice in Guatemala and there's uncertainty surrounding when/if the trial against Rios Montt will resume so I am glad that the article was published.

However, it was published the same week that a new civil war era trial began against Pedro Garcia Arredondo (see here and here). He is charged with having been complicit in the 1980 Spanish massacre, one of the more high profile massacres of the civil war.

The article also comes three months after former ORPA commander Fermin Felipe Solano Barillas was sentenced to 90 years in prison. He was found guilty on charges of homicide and crimes against humanity involving the massacre 22 civilians in the village of El Aguacate, Chimaltenango in 1988.

It's tough to say that Guatemala is at a standstill yet even though most of us probably expect this to be a more accurate title a year from now.

What's been impressive is that these two cases have continued since Paz y Paz was removed as attorney general in May. The trial against the ORPA commander was resolved in July and the one against Garcia went to trial when it was pretty clear that neither the attorney general's office nor the president's office supported such initiatives.