Opposition leader accused of human rights violations.
| Autor | Reynolds, Louisa |
While news of President Alvaro Colom and his wife's divorce, which seeks to enable first lady Sandra Torres' presidential candidacy, continues to hit the headlines NotiCen, April 7, 2011, less has been said about a human rights case that could prevent opposition candidate retired Army Gen. Otto Perez Molina of the rightist Partido Patriota (PP) from running for office.
In January of this year, the Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ) ordered the Efrain Bamaca case to be reopened NotiCen, July 4, 2002 in compliance with a resolution issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).
Bamaca, known as Comandante Everardo, was born in 1957 in the northern department of San Marcos. He came from an illiterate campesino family, and at the age of 18 he joined the Organizacion del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA), becoming one of its main leaders. In 1991, he married US lawyer Jennifer Harbury, whom he had met a year earlier when she travelled to San Marcos to research the conditions in which guerrilla combatants lived NotiCen, July 23, 1998.
The Comision para el Esclarecimiento Historico (CEH) said that, on March 12, 1992, the Army captured Bamaca in the eastern department of Retalhuleu. He was imprisoned in the Santa Ana Berlin military garrison in Coatepeque, in the highland department of Quetzaltenango, where he allegedly was tortured before being handed over to the Direccion de Inteligencia (G2), then led by Perez Molina.
Bamaca's remains have never been found, and Harbury continues to wage a legal battle to bring those responsible for Bamaca's death to justice.
A declassified US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document dated Nov. 24, 1994, published by the independent, nongovernmental National Security Archive (NAS), claims that crucial documents on the Bamaca case and hundreds of others have been destroyed.
Another piece of evidence from the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) mentions a document from the group Por la Reivindicacion del Ejercito de Guatemala (PREGUA), which holds Perez Molina responsible for Bamaca's death.
A report titled "The Bamaca Case--an 18-year-old Struggle for Justice," by the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC), also mentions the allegations against the retired general.
The evidence has been sent to the Ministerio Publico (MP) for the case to be reinvestigated.
Can Perez Molina run for office?
The PP candidate, who currently leads voter-preference polls with 47.2%, argues that the allegations cannot prevent him from...
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