Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London and their mandate is to develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques, methods, and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence.
FA was commissioned by Guatemalan NGO, the Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (CALDH), to support their efforts to gather evidence for the trial of the country’s former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, whose brief military regime ran from March 1982 to August 1983, and senior members of his security apparatus.
Montt would ultimately be convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
After Montt’s conviction was overturned in 2013, Forensic Architecture’s research was presented as part of a legal process pursued in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, where the Ixil community had taken its demands for justice.
Recently, in June 2024, Professor Eyal Weizman and Dr Paulo Tavares, from FA, were called as expert witnesses to present their report The Scorched Earth: Environmental Violence in the Ixil Territory as part of the trial of former general Benedicto Lucas García.
You can see the outputs of their investigation, including a video Guatemala: Operation Sofia, here Genocide in the Ixil Triangle – Forensic Architecture.
Categories: Environment, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Military, Rios Montt, Video, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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