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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The overall conditions for human rights monitors in Guatemala remained precarious. The June MINUGUA report noted an increase in threats and intimidations against individuals and entities working for the protection of human rights.... The most dramatic of these was the assassination of Bishop Juan José Gerardi, the director of the Archbishop of Guatemalas Human Rights Office (Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala, ODHAG). On April 24, 1998, before the eyes of the nation, Bishop Gerardi presented Guatemala: Never Again, a four-volume work documenting the human rights abuses committed by state agents and the insurgency during thirty-six years of civil war. The reportthe culmination of three years of research involving nearly 600 investigatorsfound the military, other official forces, state-sponsored civil patrols, and clandestine death squads responsible for 90 percent of the grave human rights violations committed during the conflict, while the remaining 10 percent of the abuses were attributed to the URNG guerrilla alliance.
Throughout the investigation, the government went to great lengths to dismiss the notion that the assassination was politically motivated. On April 30, an indigent, Carlos Enrique Vielman Viani, was arrested and charged with the killing. Interior Minister Rodolfo Mendoza announced that the murder was almost solved, implying that the motive was one of common crime. Nearly three months later, Vielman was released as both church authorities and the government agreed that he had not been involved in the crime. On July 22, authorities arrested Father Mario Orantes, the priest who also lived in the San Sebastián house, along with the parish cook, Juana Margarita López. The states main evidence against the pair rested on enlarged photographs of the corpse, which according to some experts revealed a dog bite that went unnoticed during the autopsy; the teeth marks purportedly matched those of Orantess German shepherd. Although the corpse of Bishop Gerardi was exhumed in September, and Guatemalan and U.S. forensic specialists present concluded that there were no traces of a dog bite, the priest was subsequently charged with the murder and remained in jail. (A Spanish specialist present reportedly did not concur with his colleagues views.) Errors and negligence in the investigation by Guatemalan authorities began at the crime scene, which the public prosecutor failed to properly secure. Despite years of training in crime scene preservation from the United States Justice Department and the Spanish Civil Guard, authorities permitted onlookers to roam freely around the site, including two who allegedly worked for the EMP. Videotapes from the night of the crime show prosecutor Otto Ardón and his investigator examining the presumed murder weapon without latex gloves and traipsing through the pools of blood surrounding the bishops corpse. Few efforts were made to sustain the chain of custody as forensic samples were sent to the PNC and to the public prosecutors crime lab in unsealed vials. Shortly after the murder, the government established a High-Level Commission (Comisión de Alto Nivel) to support the investigation and facilitate communication between the church and the public prosecutors office. The commission was composed of government officials with justice and human rights-related expertise. Its work proved disappointing however; in May and June, it rejected or ignored a series of requests from the church, including that the commission ask the British government to send a Scotland Yard investigator and that commission replace the public prosecutor, Otto Ardón, because of his prior links to the military. In late May, the ODHAG provided a license plate number of a vehicle registered to a military base seen circling the parish the night of the crime as well as the names of Gen. (r) Byron Disrael Lima Estrada and his son, Capt. Byron Miguel Lima Oliva of the EMP, both of whom the office believed to be linked to the crime. The commission reportedly responded by providing publicly available information from the vehicles registration card, denying the retired general had anything to do with the crime, and declining to investigate Captain Lima Oliva. The government disbanded the commission in July. In late July, after ODHAG coordinator Ronalth Ochaeta mentioned the two men at a press conference in Madrid, the government announced that both officers would be investigated. Following the murder of Monsignor Gerardi, members of the ODHAG were subjected to sporadic surveillance by unknown individuals and received anonymous threatening phone calls. The week following the bishops death, Carlos Federico Reyes López, coordinator of the ODHAG forensic anthropology team, received several anonymous threatening telephone calls in his office. Reyes López was closely involved in the initial stages of the Gerardi investigation and testified before the U.S. Congress about the case. Catholic priest Pedro Nota, who worked closely on the preparation and dissemination of the Guatemala: Never Again report, also received serious threats. During the day on April 28, 1998, a double-cab pick-up truck circled his house for thirty minutes. On May 4, a white sedan with polarized windows and no license plates arrived outside his house. A man exited the vehicle, furtively took some photographs, and then drove away. Six days later, as the wife of a worker in Father Notas parish left to go grocery shopping, she noticed two individuals behind her who were accompanied by the same white sedan. As she turned to cross the street, the two men blocked her path and told her to tell the priest to flee the country because they had him under surveillance ( lo tenían controlado) and they were going to kill him if he did not leave. Father Nota left Guatemala on May 24.
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