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In early November, with just days remaining in the genocide trial against retired Guatemalan General Benedicto Lucas García, courtroom tensions spiked. The prosecution was supposed to present one of its last expert witnesses, Peruvian Major General Rodolfo Robles Espinoza, but he did not show up, leaving a document with his written testimony, presented on October 28, as his only contribution to the judicial process.
The defense seized the moment in an effort to call into question the court itself as a fair arbiter, opposing the court’s decision to waive the oral testimony but keep the document, which had been read by the prosecution into the record.
Despite the fact that Article 19 of the Judicial Branch Law allows for that decision, the defense responded by filing a recusal against the court itself. Similar to in 2013, when the defense in the Efraín Ríos Montt genocide trial filed a motion against the same High-Risk Tribunal. The Constitutional Court accepted Ríos Montt’s objection and annulled his sentence, and he died during retrial.
In the Lucas García trial, Mario Trejo, plaintiffs’ lawyer with the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), explains the court’s logic in referring the recusal for appeal while refusing to let it stop proceedings: “This [recusal] was rejected because it cannot be raised at this stage of the judicial process,” he told El Faro English.
A hearing to resolve the defense’s maneuver has been kicked out to November 28. Lucas García, meanwhile, appears to be appealing to shifting political winds. On November 6, one day after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, the defendant, still listening through a videoconference from the Military Hospital, appeared on screen with an extra accessory to his hospital gown: a cap that read “Trump” in large letters.
Days later, the lawyer accompanying him throughout the trial, Karen Fischer, who was engaged in last year’s efforts to illegally overturn the election results, wore the same cap.
The prosecution asked for a sentence of 2,860 years in prison. When the defense began to present its conclusions, Lucas García’s supporters and his wife —who, in Indigenous Mayan attire, prayed over one of the two women defense attorneys— were in the courtroom.
The defense placed on the table a thick stack of photos, books, and videos that they did not present in the debate phase. The judge agreed to accept them into the record. It has taken the defense three days and they have not finished. This is due to the several attempts to delay sentencing by objecting to the actions of the court and the prosecution throughout the more than 95 hearings.
The defense seeks to blame the state for the crimes, rather than the defendant, even though the prosecution has presented direct evidence placing him in the theater of operations, such as the testimony of a U.S. photojournalist who rode in a helicopter there with the general.
“There was no genocide,” the defense rebuffed, despite the fact that the point of the trial is not to dispute whether genocide against Maya peoples was committed —it was, according to the Commission for Historical Clarification— but whether Lucas’ personal actions constituted genocide.
Lucas’ team also denied that rapes were committed, despite the nine survivors who testified in person about the sexual violence they endured at the hands of soldiers.
El Faro English requested comment from the defense on the recusal of the court. They did not respond; nor have they granted multiple interview requests in recent weeks.
Proceedings have been suspended since November 13, when one of the judges of the court fainted in the middle of the hearing. She is still under medical observation. The court said hearings will resume when the judge recovers and is able to continue.
Persecution of the prosecution
Amid an effervescent trial, the Prosecutor's Office for Human Rights has faced setbacks even from within the Public Prosecutor's Office. On November 4, Attorney General Consuelo Porras fired the prosecutor in charge of the Ixil genocide file for years, Erick de León, putting the case at risk.
Amid the fiery atmosphere in their office, Porras transferred four auxiliary prosecutors from the Lucas case, leaving one member of the original team. At a November 14 press conference, the victims, AJR's lawyer, and the prosecution denounced interference by the attorney general, who has filed lawsuits against the prosecutors.
The prosecution has tried to keep a tight lid on how this could affect the judicial process. Trejo only said in another impromptu press conference that they will wait for the judge's recovery. They called on national and international human rights organizations to observe the process and to “take solidarity measures” to denounce the delays.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment on the motive for the dismissal and transfers of prosecutors just days before a ruling was expected in the Benedicto Lucas genocide trial.
During the now more than 95 hearings, testimonies and documents have presented evidence of dozens of massacres, 90 forced disappearances, sexual violence, forced displacement, and the complete destruction of 32 villages. Much of this evidence, including two-dozen audio testimonies submitted in advance by aging or sick witnesses, was collected between 2010 and 2017.
Fifty documents included human rights investigations during the period in the Ixil region, including a report by Amnesty International, a country report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1981, and another report by the Inter-American Commission on its request for an on-site visit, which was refused by the government of General Romeo Lucas Garcia, Benedicto’s brother.
There are also declassified U.S. State Department records that “based their information on CIA sources, showing the implementation of Operación Barrida [Operation Sweep] in the Ixil region starting in January 1982, under the direction of Benedicto Lucas,” says Raúl Nájera, of the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala (ODHAG), a plaintiff organization.
Military documents were also presented: a dozen theses prepared by officers of the General Staff for promotion to higher ranks, based on a military bibliography and secret intelligence reports. One thesis, “How to eradicate subversion in the department of Quiché,” establishes how the Guatemalan Army had operated up to the moment when it was written, in October 1981.
“These demonstrate that Benedicto Lucas García directed military operations during that period,” adds Nájera. “He himself [Lucas] explained to journalists at the time that they would launch a military offensive in the department of Quiché, employing more than 15,000 troops.”
Scientific evidence included 43 experts, including forensic anthropologists, archeologists, anthropologists, and forensic geneticists. They identified mass graves and the recovery of remains of victims, which showed the circumstances of death and demonstrated that there was a systematic way of executing the massacres, repeated in each of the events.
Nájera also points to an expert opinion on the socio-environmental impact of the violence in the Ixil region: a study of satellite images before, during and after the military operations and the level of evident destruction.
“It is evident that the impact of military operations was not only to eliminate the person or the group but also their environment that allows them to survive,” he concluded.
Now, it is the case against Lucas García that may not survive, Nájera worries. “There is clearly a systematic attack against the Unit for Special Cases from the Internal Armed Conflict from the military sector tied to the genocide and powerful groups bent on dismantling the unit.”
“Many prosecutors are aware of that,” he concludes. “Despite their commitment, ethics, and objectivity, they work for an attorney general tied to military groups, who has not flinched in committing these abuses by transferring personnel on baseless grounds.”
This article first appeared in the November 25 edition of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.
