Sentenced to 5.160 years in prison a guatemalan military that killed 199 civilians

The guatemalan justice has condemned this Wednesday night at 5.160 years in prison and 50 of seclusion effective soldier Santos Lopez Alonzo as guilty of the murder of 199 unarmed civilians, mostly elderly, women and children, in the framework of the ferocious repression unleashed by the Army over the guerrillas of inspiration marxist. The killing occurred 36 years ago —the December 6, 1982—, under the dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt, when a Patrol Special Kaibiles (PEK, elite troops) came up to the village and, after surround and enclose the population in a local church, they proceeded to subject her to torture in search of information that would allow to locate to the command of the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) who operated in the region.

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According to the testimonies of the survivors, the massacre began at the stroke of noon. The first to be killed were the babies, whom they killed in front of their parents, with hits of almádana (a type of mallet of iron) on the head. Before he died, the girls were subjected to rape by the soldiers. Later, when the killing was over, the bodies were thrown Holiganbet into a pit, doused with gasoline and burned. The torture lasted until the 8th of December.

The rebels never understood the brutal action. The guerrillas consistently avoided passing by the vicinity of the village and the contact with their neighbours. “We felt like we were very close to the Army, and we feared that it could delatarnos,” stresses a former commander of insurgent in conversation with this newspaper.

Lopez Alonzo was deported from the united States —where he lived from 2001— in August of 2016. On his return to Guatemala was accused of murder and crimes against humanity. It is not the first convicted for the Dos Erres massacre, one of the wildest and most paradigmatic of the repression that occurred during the civil war waged in Guatemala between 1960 and 1996. The first group of sentenced was formed by the kaibiles Manuel Pop Sun, Reyes Collin Gualip and Daniel Martínez Méndez and the second lieutenant Antonio Carías López, who in 2011 received a sentence 6.060 years in prison. In 2012, Pedro Pimentel, also deported from the united STATES, received a sentence similar.

Today, the village of las Dos Erres has disappeared —only a chain link fence metal stands today in the place, as a sad reminder of the massacre— and the survivors, people who had managed to escape to the shelter of the night, nothing more to realize the presence of the Army, do not want to go back to the place not to relive the horror, even though it hovered at the same, during the trial, where, with tears in their eyes and terror in their faces, they could see photos of their relatives massacred, and in December of 2013, when 169 coffins were buried in the cemetery of a village next.