A sham trial against a former anti-corruption prosecutor gets underway, while a judge gives an alleged war criminal a “get out of jail free” card.
Jo-Marie Burt and Paulo Estrada write in WOLA about justice in Guatemala today. While a former anti-corruption prosecutor faces trial on spurious grounds, a captured fugitive, charged in connection with the ‘Death Squad Dossier’ case (Caso Diario Militar) has been released from preventative detention. The former has been targeted by the the son of a now deceased military official who died just days before he was about to be arrested in a war crimes case, while the latter has close ties to the country’s ultra-conservative oligarchy.
Justice – Guatemalan style.
Guatemala’s courthouse tower is an imposing building. Four elevators move hundreds of people up and down its fifteen stories each day, though inevitably one or two of them are not working, leading many to get their daily steps by trudging up and down the dreary stairwell filled with signs about reporting corruption.
Hearings in two cases unfolded this week in the courthouse tower that reveal the dramatic effects of a co-opted justice system, the result of a long-term strategy of Guatemalan elites, military officials, and nefarious politicians to end Guatemala’s bold experiment in combating corruption and impunity in order to reassert their control of the country and guarantee their power and privilege. After a decade in which anti-corruption and anti-impunity efforts were beginning to bear fruit, these elites joined forces not only to bring down these efforts, but to co-opt key institutions, including the Public Ministry, the Supreme Court, and the Constitutional Court, and to turn the justice system into an instrument to punish those who were at the heart of Guatemala’s anti-impunity crusade, including judges, prosecutors, magistrates, and human rights defenders. The result is distorted justice, in which honest legal professionals are being criminalized and forced into exile, and the corrupt and criminals are free to engage in “business as usual.”
You can read the full piece, with photos and links here, The Distortion of Justice in Guatemala.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Legal, Military, Solidarity in Action, Solidarity in Action/Guatemala, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
Post comments here