In the genocide trial against retired military commander Benedicto Lucas García, initially expected to end three weeks ago, the defense has attempted to recuse the court to delay sentencing. Last-minute tension is affecting proceedings: A judge is now on medical leave, and Attorney General Consuelo Porras removed five prosecutors from the case. Victims asked for international support to achieve the justice they have sought for more than 40 years.
Yuliana Ramazzini wrote recently in El Faro English on the various ploys and strategies being used to dereail the genocide trial of Benedicto Lucas García.
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.
You can read the full article, with links and photos, here.
Categories: Corruption, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Racism, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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