Rios Montt might die before being brought to justice

Beenish Ahmed looks at This 88-Year-Old Man Is Accused Of Genocide. But He Might Die Before Being Brought To Justice for Think Progress.

To Dranginis, who has worked to collect evidence of genocide in Guatemala, the importance of holding the trial within the country is still of the utmost.

“Trials for atrocity crimes aim to do a lot of different things, but one of them is to provide a sense of justice and restore a sense dignity to the victims, and if trials are happening thousands of miles away from victims, they won’t be able to see that come to fruition,” she said. “I think the most important thing is to show that a national jurisdiction has the power and the will to prosecute its own citizens for the atrocity crimes that they have committed. That has an important symbolic value for deterrence of those crimes in the future.”

But few advocates are optimistic about this case. Kelsey Alford-Jones thinks the chance of a fair trial is growing increasingly slim.

“When you look at the trial in 2013 and compare it to 2015, there’s really nothing that you can point to and say that this time around there will be a fair trial,” she said. “In fact, I would say that all the evidence suggests that the conditions are worse now than they were in 2013.”

Claudio Paz Y Paz, the attorney general who pushed for the case to be heard in Guatemala, has since moved to the U.S. after her term was cut short — likely because of her work to crack the shield of impunity long enjoyed by Guatemala’s most powerful.

I share similar concerns with Dranginis and Alford-Jones. Here is what I wrote in March 2013 at the start of the trial.

Elizabeth Malkin at the New York Times has In Effort to Try Dictator, Guatemala Shows New Judicial Might. The integrity of the country's judicial system has a lot riding on the Rios Montt trial which is understandable but probably a little unfair. Guatemala's judicial system is indeed much better today than it was three or four years ago regardless of the outcome. A better job is being done to remove corrupt police. The police, lawyers, and judges are better trained and equipped to do their jobs. There are problems all around, but I'd say improvements all around too.

In the two or three years leading up to the Rios Montt trial, the Guatemalan judicial system had demonstrated reasonable improvement.However, the actions of the Constitutional Court to annul the trial, the removal of Paz y Paz and sidelining of Judge Barrios, and the controversial selections of appellate and Supreme Court justices have severely set back the cause of justice in Guatemala. I made that argument in the recent Freedom House Freedom in the World report for Guatemala.

I was much more optimistic about a trial reaching a conclusion and conviction in 2013 (Who expected Rios Montt to go to trial?) than I am today. I hope I am wrong but I would be surprised to see a new trial reach a conclusion and conviction followed by jail time for Rios Montt. I hope that I am wrong.

Guatemalan courts had ruled on police and military crimes during the armed conflict, including Dos Erres, prior to the start of the Rios Montt trial. The strategy seems to have been to prosecute relatively low-level subordinates for their involvement in heinous crimes. After having demonstrated those crimes, they could then make a stronger legal and political argument against those who oversaw the campaign.

And while I don't want to think about it this way, we'll have to ask whether pushing Guatemala's courts on such a difficult and controversial case before necessary national and institutional conditions existed did more harm than good for developing the rule of law in Guatemala.