UNREDACTED

Guatemala achieved a breakthrough for justice today with the opening of the landmark criminal trial of Efraín Ríos Montt, former military dictator, for genocide and crimes against humanity. Ríos Montt, along with his chief of army intelligence José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, is charged with ordering and overseeing a bloody counterinsurgency campaign during his 1982-83 regime that sought to wipe out guerrilla forces and anyone who supported them. The indictment accuses the two retired generals of responsibility for fifteen massacres in the Ixil region of the country’s northwestern Quiché department, resulting in the deaths of 1,771 unarmed men, women and children.

The proceedings will begin with a review of the evidence by Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez. The prosecution plans to propose 142 witnesses – among them, relatives of victims and survivors of the massacres – and 64 experts, including military analysts, forensic scientists, anthropologists, scholars, investigators and psychologists. Documents will include…

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