Prosecutor representing Ixil minority group hopes pan-American court can reinstate 80-year sentence that was quashed in May

The disrupted prosecution for genocide of the former Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Rios Montt will move onto the international stage this week when victims’ relatives and their lawyers converge on Washington.

The 86-year-old former military ruler of the central American state was found guilty by a domestic court in May of ordering the massacre of 1,771 members of the Mayan Ixil people during Guatemala‘s civil war in the early 1980s. But 11 days later the country’s constitutional court overturned the conviction and 80-year prison sentence imposed on him, throwing the complex legal process into disarray.

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Categories: Guatemala