(사진제공=AP)
(사진제공=AP)
(사진제공=AP)
[과터말러시티=AP/KNS뉴스통신] 1일 과테말러 재판부는 냉전시대 좌파 게릴라를 지원한다면서 여러 마을을 공격해 수많은 마야 인디언을 살해한 혐의로 기소된 전 과테말러 독재자에 대해 면책권을 박탈했다.
1980년대 초엽에 좌파 반대 세력에 대해 군부가 전국적 규모의 초토화 작전을 전개해 약 44개의 마을이 소멸되고, 20만 명에 이르는 사망자와 막대한 수의 난민이 발생한 사건에 대해 리오스 몽트와 10여명의 군 장성에 대해 사법부가 면책권을 박탈하면서 과테말라에서 자행된 광범위한 인권유린범들에 대해 기소할 수 있는 선례가 된 것으로 판단하고 있다.
1982년 쿠데타로 정권을 잡은 리오 몽트를 지난 1월 재판부가 기소하면서 중앙아메리카에서 전 독재자에 대해 민간인 대량 학살 혐의로 기소한 첫 번째 케이스가 됐다.
(영문기사 원문)
Guatemala judge denies ex-dictator's amnesty claim
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's civil war has no amnesty from charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians, a judge ruled Thursday.
The decision to strip ex-Gen. Efrain Rios Montt of the pardon granted by his successor more than a quarter-century ago will be appealed to Guatemala's highest court, his defense said. That means any trial of the 85-year-old former strongman could be months or years away.
Nonetheless, human rights advocates said, Judge Miguel Angel Galvez's decision is an important symbolic victory for the victims of one of the most horrific of the conflicts that devastated Central America during the last decades of the Cold War.
Guatemala's leaders have been criticized for years for their inability or unwillingness to prosecute government forces and allied paramilitaries accused of marching into Mayan villages, carrying out rapes and torture, and slaughtering women, children and unarmed men in a "scorched earth" campaign aimed at eliminating the support for a left-wing guerrilla movement.
Despite a series of international inquiries finding him responsible for war crimes, Rios Montt served as a Guatemalan congressman for 15 years until he lost a re-election race late last year. He had held immunity from prosecution while a member of Congress and was put under house arrest after losing his post.
One of the highest priorities of the president who won last year's election, Otto Perez Molina, has been campaigning for the elimination of a U.S. ban on military aid to Guatemala, which is locked in a fight against heavily armed drug cartels that have taken over swathes of the country.
Among the conditions set by the U.S. Congress for restoring the aid is reforming Guatemala's justice system and putting an end to impunity.
The decision to hold Rios Montt responsible for war crimes committed during his 1982-83 regime could stand as a precedent in the cases of two other former generals accused alongside Rios Montt and of dozens of other lower-ranking military men accused of participating in atrocities, victims' advocates said.
Galvez ruled that a 1986 amnesty law passed by Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores, who ousted Rios Montt, was invalidated by an international treaty against genocide that Guatemala signed in 1949.
Rios Montt is accused of authorizing 1,400 human rights violations, the displacement of 29,000 indigenous Guatemalans and 1,771 killings, many under a program intended to completely eliminate an indigenous Mayan ethnic group known as the Ixil.
"There are crimes like genocide and crimes against humanity that have no statute of limitations, and for that reason there can be no amnesty decree," Galvez said.
Rios Montt, who took power in a 1982 coup and was toppled the following year, was appealing charges filed in January by another judge, the first time a Latin American court had charged a former president with genocide.
김희광 기자 april4241@naver.com
