Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Guatemalan army officer convicted over 1982 massacre
#1
[URL="http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/guatemalan-army-officer-convicted-in-u-s-courtroom-for-lying-about-dos-erres-massacre/"]http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/guatemalan-army-officer-convicted-in-u-s-courtroom-for-lying-about-dos-erres-massacre/

[/URL]A California jury found former Guatemalan lieutenant Jorge Sosa Orantes guilty on two counts of naturalization fraud today, concluding that he deliberately hid his role in the gruesome 1982 Dos Erres massacre when applying for U.S. citizenship years later.
The verdict followed a week of harrowing testimony from two former soldiers and a survivor of the massacre before the federal jury in Riverside, California. According to the Associated Press, the 55-year-old Sosa Orantes will be sentenced on December 9.
The witnesses described how Sosa Orantes led a unit of Kaibil soldiers in killing dozens of men, women, and children in the tiny settlement of Dos Erres in northern Guatemala over several days in December 1982. The crimes went uninvestigated by the Guatemalan state until a team of Argentine forensic anthropologists unearthed a well in the middle of the town in 1994-95 and found the remains of more than 160 people. Two members of the Kaibil unit came forward and gave details of the massacre to Aura Elena Farfán, director of Families of the Disappeared and Detained (FAMDEGUA) in Guatemala.
Even then the case languished in the justice system, until U.S. Justice Department prosecutors from a special human rights unit won a conviction against Gilberto Jordán, another member of the Kaibil unit who took part in the massacre, on similar charges in a Florida courtroom in 2010. Since then, five members of the Guatemalan army have been tried and convicted for the Dos Erres killings in Guatemalan tribunals.

Jordán, who is serving out his ten-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison, was a key witness in the Sosa Orantes hearing. His emotional testimony is described in ProPublica's account of the trial.

The National Security Archive obtained declassified U.S. documents regarding the Dos Erres massacre through Freedom of Information requests sent on behalf of our Guatemala Documentation Project in 1995. The documents reveal shortly after the Kaibil operation, U.S. officials investigated the massacre and concluded that the Army was the only force capable of such an organized atrocity. Read some of the documents released here.

[URL="http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/guatemalan-army-officer-convicted-in-u-s-courtroom-for-lying-about-dos-erres-massacre/"]
[/URL]
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Ferguson MO grand jury no bills the officer that shot Michael Brown Drew Phipps 23 11,576 08-04-2015, 05:36 AM
Last Post: Albert Doyle
  Yet ANOTHER case of wrongful convictions! Many convicted are convicted for being poor and Black. Peter Lemkin 0 2,614 05-09-2014, 04:52 AM
Last Post: Peter Lemkin
  Former Guatemalan Dictator Ríos Montt to face genocide charges for 1980s abuses Ed Jewett 20 13,205 24-05-2013, 01:10 AM
Last Post: Magda Hassan
  Only Whistleblowers Get Tried and Convicted - Not those they mention who commited the Crimes/Treason Peter Lemkin 0 2,419 30-01-2013, 05:31 PM
Last Post: Peter Lemkin
  Demjanjuk Convicted Albert Doyle 0 2,473 17-05-2011, 04:58 PM
Last Post: Albert Doyle
  No charges for MI5 officer accused over Binyam Mohamed David Guyatt 0 2,279 17-11-2010, 05:04 PM
Last Post: David Guyatt
  Google bosses convicted in Italy David Guyatt 0 2,483 24-02-2010, 04:33 PM
Last Post: David Guyatt

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)