Prime Minister Pleased With O.A.S. Report – But What Will Guatemala Say?

Dean Barrow

The Barrow Administration is reeling from scandal to scandal. Fresh off the Danny Mason saga interrupted by Hurricane Earl, the hustle of visas, nationalities and passports at the immigration department has come around full circle.  Prime Minister Barrow returned from a medical check-up in the United States; he touched on a myriad of issues that have the nation on edge. There is one; however, that is good news: that’s a recent O.A.S. investigative report on the shooting death of fourteen year old Guatemalan, Julio Rene Alvarado Ruano. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is to make a statement at the House on Friday, but this early, it is known that the twenty-two page document confirms that B.D.F. soldiers acted in their own defence when encountering a hostile Guatemalan group in Belize’s forests and did not kill the child. The Prime Minister says the Republic must now be mature and give us an apology.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“It is clearly vindication, we are very pleased; we always knew, though, that that was in fact the position. Still a little worrying as to how the Guatemalans will react now, because this is clear vindication for the B.D.F. and exposed the falsity of the position taken by their President, taken by their Foreign Minister and taken by their officials; so I am hoping that they will be mature enough to accept that they were wrong; that the allegations that they made against the B.D.F. were utterly unjustified, and that they owe Belize an apology.”

The Prime Minister did not wish to answer to the allegations that Guatemalan officials withheld evidence from the O.A.S. investigators.