Kangaroo Court? Ex-Guatemalan dictator’s 80 year sentence overturned

Rios Montt

Eighty years in prison, was the sentence handed down last week to Guatemala’s ex-military dictator, Rios Montt, for ordering the deaths of one thousand seven hundred and seventy-one Ixil Mayas between 1982 to 1983. But Guatemala’s constitutional court has thrown out the conviction for genocide and crimes against humanity.  The court ruled that the trial should restart from April nineteenth. At that time Rios Montt’s attorney Francisco Garcia, who had previously been expelled from the court, had made legal challenges that were not resolved. The defense team walked out of the court on the previous day in protest at what they called illegal proceedings. Montt was without a lawyer for two days and he rejected a public lawyer. Human rights group, Amnesty International, called the fiasco, “devastating for the victims of the serious human rights violations.”