Genocide on Trial, Days 13 & 14: Defense experts testify, "There was never intention to commit genocide"

NISGUA continues live coverage of the trial in Guatemala of Efraín Ríos Montt and Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Read our previous summaries: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4/5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 12, Days 11-14, and full archive of ongoing live Twitter coverage.

On days 13 and 14, the court heard four controversial testimonies from experts called by the defense team. These experts were originally been denied approval to testify in the trial because the defense team submitted their names after the established deadline. However, the defense team appealed this ruling made by Judge Gálvez on February 4th and an appeals court approved the experts. On the second day of the trial, Judge Barrios recognized the appeals court's decision and swore in Manuel Eduardo Conde Orellana, José Luis Quilo Ayuso, Benjamin Rafael Francisco Godoy, and Carlos Leonel Mendez Tejada.

Carlos Leonel Mendez Tejada took the lead of the defense experts and testified on day 13, April 9th. A former Colonel of Engineers, Mendez Tejada was called to testiy on the military's chain of command. He explained that the chain of command of the president or head of state has changed historically in Guatemala. During times of peace, the president's role was limited; during wartime, the president maintained strong command. Despite testifying on behalf of the defense, expert Mendez Tejada confirmed:

Public prosecutor (MP): Can lower ranks go against strategies they receive?
Mendez Tejada: They can take initiative to change a situation if they're unhappy, always informing the Army Chief of Staff of changes.
MP: Does the army have discipline and hierarchy?
Mendez Tejada: Those are the army's identifying characteristics and they have always been maintained.

MP: Who is the country's highest authority?
Mendez Tejada: The president of Guatemala.
MP: Did you know that Guatemala was governed by a military junta from March 1982 to 1983?
Mendez Tejada: Of course.
MP: Who was the highest authority then?
Mendez Tejada: The president.

Starting in the early morning, the courtroom setting felt distinctly tense on day 14. Public attendance was higher than recent days and featured a number of high profile faces making for a dynamic crowd. Foreign diplomats were in attendance, including Alberto Brunori, representative of the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala, and the first sighting of US Ambassador Arnold Chacon. In the afternoon, the US embassy released a statement confirming its support for justice and reconciliation in Guatemala, "as reflected in the Peace Accords."

Pro-military sign outside the courtroom. "The world is upside-down! ...We demand fair trials for military officials."

Well-known military supporters and family members, including Zury Ríos Montt and Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, president of Guatemala's Foundation Against Terrorism, also held a strong presence. However, human rights defenders and sympathizers continued to be the majority in the courtroom. From the early morning, National Coordination of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA) founder and director, Rosalinda Tuyuc, and Human Rights Defenders Protection Unit (UDEFEGUA) director, Claudia Samayoa, showed their support for the trial. In the afternoon, Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum joined the already-crowded audience.

Moreover, Manuel Eduardo Conde Orellana was called to testify on day 14 only shortly after Fredy Peccerelli's highly technical testimony on forensic evidence that validates the massive and violent character of military operations in the Ixil region. Conde Orellana testified on his work with the reconciliation commission on Guatemala's peace negotiations leading up to the signing of Guatemala's Peace Accords in 1996. He cited the importance of reconciliation in the peace process and the challenges caused by high levels of mistrust at the negotiation table between the Guatemala National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) representatives and military representatives.

As one of his qualifications to work in peace negotiation, Conde Orellana took the opportunity to cite that his own father, Oscar Conde, was killed by rebel forces, which he called "an untried and unrecognized murder." When asked what methodology he used in his report, Conde Orellana replied, "I used the method of narration, transcription and my personal experiences." He repeated throughout his testimony the idea that the violence was global and not at all particular, "No one can say that the violence didn't affect him or her. No one can say they didn't know anyone who shed blood in internal armed conflict."

Defense expert José Luis Quilo Ayuso followed Conde Orellana to testify on military terminology and chain of command. Quilo Ayuso is well known as a former military official. In fact, he is the current president of Guatrmala's Association of Military Veterans (AVEMILGUA), which often hosts public actions in defense of military officials accused of crimes of the past.

The Public Prosecuter (MP) probed: Outside of the courtroom you've participated in public demonstrations of your support for the accused, correct?
Quilo Ayuso: Yes, as part of my association.
MP: As part of AVEMILGUA, are you in favor of the association's paid ad campaigns?
Quilo Ayuso: Yes, of course
MP: You've taken part in radio programs and said in public that there wasn't genocide?
Quilo Ayuso: Following my criteria, there was never intention to commit genocide.

Quilo Ayuso ended his testimony by confirmed that a national military intelligence network existed and continues to exist in Guatemala. He affirmed that General Rodríguez Sánchez was director of the network from 1982 to 1983.

The final defense expert Benjamin Rafael Francisco Godoy testified on the internal armed conflict and the insurgency in the Ixil region. Godoy's experience in the Guatemalan military spans the military hierarchy, including serving as Kaibil, specialists in counter-insurgency operations. Godoy was asked if he belongs to any military or ex-military associations and he confirmed that he also is a member of AVEMILGUA. He repeated a familiar military narrative in his testimony. He explained, "the entire national territory, 22 departments of Guatemala were affected by the 4 different guerrilla fronts." However, when asked who was the country's "internal enemy," he claimed he was unfamiliar with the term. Godoy's report, similar to earlier defense expert's contributions, lacked facts to prove his conclusions and presented a number of contradictions.

Public Prosecutor (MP): If your report is based in history, why didn't you include information on clandestine mass graves that have been discovered on military bases throughout the country?
Godoy: At the time I conducted my study, I didn't have that information.
MP: So your expert report is in fact based in history and not military narrative?
Godoy: Yes.

Judge Barrios ended day 14 noting that defense expert Godoy had not signed off on his report, thus not fulfilling proper legal procedure.

NISGUA has provided human rights accompaniment to the witness' organization, the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, and their lawyers, the Center for Human Rights Legal Action since 2000. We will continue to bear witness to the truth and bravery of these survivors throughout this historic trial. To bear witness with us, stay tuned to our ongoing live Twitter coverage @NISGUA_Guate, like our Facebook page and sign up for email updates.

You can take action to support these brave witnesses! Sign our pledge to commit to following the genocide trial and take a photo for justice with your friends.

Genocide on Trial, Day 10: Expert witnesses testify, “Racism facilitated the extermination of the Ixil...”

NISGUA continues live coverage of the trial in Guatemala of Efraín Rios Montt and Mauricio Rodriguez Sánchez for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Read our previous summaries: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4/5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9 and full archive of ongoing live Twitter coverage.

Former Guatemalan soldier Ramiro Leonard Reyes gives testimony via video-conference

100 eyewitnesses from the Maya Ixil region have given their testimony to date. Lawyer for the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) Edgar Pérez stated that due to illness, the remaining 22 witnesses have been unable to travel to Guatemala City in order to give their testimony. It is anticipated some of these witnesses will still be able to give their testimony for the prosecution.

Thursday's testimonies began with three forensic experts testifying on exhumation evidence. Marco David Garcia King of FAFG (Foundation for Forensic Anthropology in Guatemala) confirmed that forensic anthropological findings verify community witnesses' accounts. Mishel Marie Stephenson Ojea explained the process of extracting DNA from bones. Alma Nydia Vasquez Almazan confirmed a report on exhumations in the Ixil region which revealed the cause of victims' deaths to be firearms. Forensic experts continue testimony on day 11 and 12.

Three protected witnesses delivered their testimonies via video-conference from an undisclosed location. The witnesses will receive special protection to ensure their safety after testifying. All three testified on acts they witnessed from inside military bases in the Ixil region.

Julio Velazco Raymundo was captured at the age of 8 by soldiers and taken to the Visan military base, where he lived for 7 years. He spoke to the atrocities he witnessed during his time at Visan including the fate of men, women, children and elderly who were captured and brought to the base. "When they killed them, they put them in a hole. They excavated holes with machinery. They sent us children to get trash to throw on top of them. They lit the fire and burned them." Raymundo only barely escaped his death while at the base; a specialist saved his life by hiding him in a tire.

Pedro Herrera Bernal gave testimony as a former armed civil patroller (known as PAC) who had other men under his command. While living on the Xalbal military base, Bernal heard soldiers rape women and saw bombs thrown every three days. He explained that the military obligated the PACs to collaborate with the military. "If we didn’t cut down the crops they said we were collaborators of the guerrilla. We were obligated, if not we were punished."

The much anticipated testimony of former Kaibil and soldier with the first company of the Army Corps of Engineers, Hugo Ramiro Leonardo Reyes, concluded the protected witness testimonies for the day. Reyes caused a stir in the Guatemalan press after linking current President Otto Pérez Molina, then serving as Major in the Ixil region and known as Tito Arias, to massacres in Nebaj. The President's General Secretary swiftly responded at the day's end, saying that the mention of Pérez Molina was unfounded and blamed the Public Prosecutor for allowing the testimony to reference a 3rd party who has not been named in the case. Leonardo Reyes detailed the activities of kidnapping, torture, extrajudicial execution and rape, with particular emphasis on the mass graves of El Pino (The Pine Tree) and El Roble (The Oak Tree); see our excerpt below.

In those days, we were in the installation of the Army Corps of Engineers, all the officers participated in the executions that took place in El Pino. In El Pino there was no room left to bury people so they went to a place called El Roble to bury the rest of the victims.

The military and the soldiers were under orders from Major Tito Arias, known as Otto Pérez Molina; the general, José Luis Quilo Ayuso and…the commanders of the engineer company coordinated the burning and looting of the people to execute them later... 

The trucks transferred the people, took them down from the truck and one by one they went past the officers. They didn’t use weapons to execute them. Many times they were killed by bayonets, to the neck or chest. They went to the extreme that the people stabbed in the chest by bayonet, they pushed them into the hole dug out by the heavy machinery. Then they put back the earth that had been dug out, the machine put the earth over the victims…The trucks sometimes pushed the children still alive in the rebozos of the mothers into the hole.

Can you indicate the clothing worn by these executed victims?
The victims taken to camp were innocent people. People dressed in traditional cloth, white shirts, women with their traditional clothing, barefoot. The men tied by the feet and hands. If they unbound their feet it was only to take them off the trucks. When the young women were taken, they were raped, not necessarily right there. The installations of the engineers, they were provisional but as time passed they began building better buildings and that’s where they raped the young women…

Do you remember whether elderly also died?
Yes sir, there was no forgiveness for the elderly, not for the women and not for the children…

One elderly women whose hair was long, it went down to her waist, she was killed in El Pino. They cut her head off and took it to the officers’ cafeteria. …All the officers cut this elderly women’s head off and brought it to the table. They left her head on the table so all the women who worked in the kitchen preparing food [would see], to provoke a reaction from them, or to scare them, or as a joke.

…There was a pot of coffee so that those of us in service, we could drop by to drink coffee. ...I didn’t have the nerve to drink coffee there because of the head on that table. It is something I cannot forget.

The day concluded with expert testimony by Marta Elena Casaús Arzú, author of "Lineage and Racism", whose definitive work outlines the links between racism and the power elite of Guatemala. Casaús Arzú presented her expert report in which she makes the case that genocide is the maximum expression of racism. She made the distinction between genocide and ethnocide and defends that both were committed in Guatemala: "Genocide is the massive elimination or massacre, of an ethnic group, while ethnocide is the destruction, suppression of their culture, as Plan Sofia said: 'Erase the Ixil'...In Guatemala there was an ethnocidal genocide." Finally, Casaús Arzú explained that the military's use of rape and model villages, among other control tactics, were expressions of racism. “Racism facilitated the extermination of the Ixil and assisted the military in carrying out genocide.”

NISGUA has provided human rights accompaniment to the witness' organization, the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, and their lawyers, the Center for Human Rights Legal Action since 2000. We will continue to bear witness to the truth and bravery of these survivors throughout this historic trial. To bear witness with us, stay tuned to our ongoing live Twitter coverage @NISGUA_Guate, like our Facebook page and sign up for email updates.

You can take action to support these brave witnesses! Sign our pledge to commit to following the genocide trial and take a photo for justice with your friends.