(Washington D.C., May 8, 2003) The decision to release a senior army officer convicted last year for the 1990 killing of Myrna Mack is a severe blow for human rights in Guatemala, Human Rights Watch said today.
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This ruling is extremely disappointing. It shows that the Guatemalan judiciary is still not up to the job when it comes to holding top army officers accountable for their actions.
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“This ruling is extremely disappointing,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. “It shows that the Guatemalan judiciary is still not up to the job when it comes to holding top army officers accountable for their actions.”
Mack, an anthropologist, had been studying the army’s mistreatment of displaced rural communities when she was attacked in front of her Guatemala City office on September 11, 1990. Stabbed 27 times, she bled to death in the street.
Police initially informed Mack’s relatives that she had died in a traffic accident. Later, they suppressed a 60-page report by their own investigators that concluded it had been a political killing and linked the military to the crime. Only after Helen Mack, Myrna’s sister, intervened did the case move forward.
Army sergeant Noel Beteta was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 25 years in 1993. At the time of Mack’s murder, Beteta served in the presidential security unit (Estado Mayor Presidencial). The unit was responsible for numerous human rights violations during the war, according to a United Nations-sponsored truth commission report issued in 1999.
Myrna Mack was only one of 200,000 people killed during the country’s 36-year internal conflict, which ended in 1996. Like Mack, the vast majority of these were civilians killed by state forces. Only a handful of these cases have been addressed by the Guatemalan justice system and with very mixed results.
The history of the Mack prosecution illustrates the daunting obstacles that Guatemalans face seeking accountability for human rights abuses. One is the use of threats and violence to intimidate justice officials, witnesses and lawyers. In the Mack case, one police investigator who initially gathered the incriminating evidence was murdered in 1991. Two other investigators and three witnesses also received threats and fled the country.
In August 2002, Roberto Romero, a lawyer acting for the Myrna Mack Foundation, reported receiving death threats.
Another obstacle in prosecuting human rights cases is the refusal of the Guatemalan military to cooperate with civilian justice system. In the Mack case, the military refused to supply justice officials with requested documentation and actively obstructed the investigation by submitting false information and doctored documents.
A third obstacle is the ability of defense attorneys to engage in delay tactics. This problem is compounded by the routine failure of justice officials to abide by legally mandated deadlines in responding to legal pleadings. In the Mack case, the defense’s delaying tactics forced the prosecution to drag out 12 years.
Helen Mack has announced her intention to appeal the ruling.
“The decision undermines the progress that a small number of courageous and incorruptible judges and prosecutors have made in recent years on human rights cases,” said Vivanco.
