SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
For seventeen months in 1982-3, Rios Montt implemented a ruthless counterinsurgency campaign aimed at eradicating the country's "internal enemy," the armed insurgents and their perceived ideological and logistical supporters among the unarmed civilian population. The conflict, which lasted 36 years, saw 200,000 Guatemalans killed, more than 45,000 were disappeared, and approximately 1 million evicted from their homes and communities. Rios Montt was also responsible for the deaths of 1,711 Maya Ixil, an indigenous ethnic group. Through assassination, rape, violent displacement, and starvation, Rios Montt hoped to destroy the fabric of Ixil culture.
As she delivered the guilty verdict, Judge Jazmin Barrios ordered Guatemala's attorney general to continue investigating the crimes for which Rios Montt was convicted. This reckoning would mark the beginning, not the end, of the encounter with Guatemala's horrific past. Her directive did not sit well with military and economic elites who opposed the trial and openly denied that genocide occurred. The powerful business group CACIF (Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations) demanded that the verdict be overturned, and Rios Montt's attorney argued that the conviction would paralyze Guatemala.
Given the politically divisive situation, it was unsurprising when on May 20, in a 3-2 decision of the Constitutional Court, Rios Montt's conviction was annulled. The Court also invalidated all that transpired in the trial after April 19. A simple resumption of the trial after that date would raise a host of legal issues, leaving the status of the case in turmoil. Multiple appeals are pending as well, and the Constitutional Court has yet to rule on the applicability of Guatemala's 1996 amnesty law to Rios Montt, although it clearly excluded genocide and crimes against humanity.
This decision struck a crushing blow to survivors and human rights advocates and raises serious concerns about the independence and integrity of the judiciary. But it is clearly not the end of the fight. Rios Montt can never undo Judge Barrios's declaration of his guilt, and survivors and their supporters will continue their struggle for justice.
Guatemala must be lauded for this momentous, if tenuous, legal reckoning, which never would have happened without the courageous and tireless efforts of survivors, their advocates, and supporters over the last 31 years.
Many developments paved the way for Rios Montt's conviction once he surrendered the immunity he enjoyed as a legislator until 2012. The 1999 UN-sponsored Truth Commission was one of them. The Commission found that 93 percent of the killings in Guatemala were perpetrated by the military, 3 percent by the insurgents, and 4 percent by undetermined parties. The Commission also concluded that successive military regimes had committed genocides in four regions. These efforts helped to pierce the silence surrounding the atrocities and to foster support for survivors.
Moreover, particularly during the presidency of Alvaro Colom (2008-2012), military control over societal institutions had loosened. Some independent judges have since risen through the ranks, and the judiciary is taking on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. International tribunals have also provided Guatemalans pushing for truth and accountability some insulation from threats and harassment. A case brought in Spain under universal jurisdiction resulted in arrest warrant for Rios Montt, and a 2004 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that the July 18, 1982 Plan de Sanchez massacre was part of a genocide carried out by the state of Guatemala against its Mayan Achi population. Outside legal processes helped to collect and validate evidence that later was used against Rios Mont in Guatemala.
In part because the international spotlight has been so effective, the defendants and their allies continue to condemn the "international meddling" in Guatemalan affairs. If these complaints signify anything, it is the danger Guatemalan elites see from a complete and thorough investigation and public legal accounting. For such an outcome threatens even the country's sitting president.
The world outside Guatemala has not played a benign role in that country's horrors.
In the immediate aftermath of the trial, human rights advocates reiterated their call to investigate the role of current President and former General Otto Perez Molina, a graduate from the U.S. School of the Americas and reportedly a CIA asset. In 2011, several human rights organizations presented an Allegation Letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture outlining evidence against Perez Molina. Their motion included a widely circulated videotape of Perez Molina in 1982 standing over battered bodies who had reportedly been subjected to abusive interrogation before being extrajudicially executed. Numerous other witnesses as well as Guatemalan military documents and U.S. cables have directly implicated Perez Molina for crimes against humanity in the Ixil triangle. There is also evidence, including declassified intelligence documents, that Perez Molina continued to perpetrate human rights abuses when he ascended to the position of Director of Military Intelligence in the early 1990s, including complicity in the torture and extrajudicial assassination of insurgent leader Efrain BAmaca VelAsquez, husband of US human rights attorney Jennifer Harbury.
Although Perez Molina has the right as president to deny that genocide occurred or to refuse to give the trial his imprimatur, he was obliged to avoid obstructing the trial and infringing on judicial independence. According to journalist Allan Nairn, Perez Molina actively but unsuccessfully intervened to shut down the trial after a former soldier testifying from an undisclosed location implicated him in open court. When asked whether the guilty verdict changed his opinion that genocide did not occur in Guatemala, Perez Molina replied it did not. Though he did pledge to support the court's decision, Perez Molina observed that multiple appeals lodged throughout the process were still pending and that the highest court had not sanctioned the verdict. Asked to clarify his stance that civilians were fair targets during the conflict, Perez Molina did not back away from his prior justification that "all families [targeted] are with the guerrillas."
But the world outside Guatemala has not played a benign role in that country's horrors. Foreign governments directly and indirectly supported the Guatemalan regime, and these governments, too, bear legal responsibility. The United States in particular has bloody hands. The United States provided arms, training, funding, intelligence and boots on the ground to the Guatemalan military from the 1954 coup forward, including during the worst years of the killings. The UN Truth Commission held the United States responsible for supporting the military regime, and multiple experts in the genocide trial testified to U.S. influence and intervention in the conflict. Charges of U.S. complicity are not just the rallying cry of anti-imperialist critics--they have been confirmed repeatedly by official U.S. government documents.
Jose Efrain Rios Montt / Plaza Publica (cc)
Robert Parry has brought this evidence to the public's attention. For instance, he cites a newly disclosed document from the National Archives, which confirms Reagan's 1981 policy supporting not only the extermination of the armed rebels, but also the elimination of the insurgency's presumed logistical and ideological support among civilians. One memo outlines U.S. concerns about public allegations of indiscriminate killing, but the focus seems to be on reputational damage rather than protection of innocents. In the memo, a member of the U.S. administration tells a Guatemalan official that American support would be easier to secure "if you could give me your assurance that you will take steps to halt official involvement in the killing of persons not involved with the guerrilla forces or their civilian support mechanisms." Documents uncovered at the Reagan Presidential Library establish his administration's efforts to thwart a congressional ban on equipping the Guatemalan military by enlisting the assistance of Israel.
These documents make it clear that the United States wanted to advance its geopolitical and economic interests in Guatemala, irrespective of the human toll. The Reagan White House sought to dismiss the atrocities, which it asserted were either committed by insurgents or manipulated by the press. Despite his administration's clear knowledge of conditions on the ground, President Reagan himself declared, "President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. . . . I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."
In 1999, after the UN Commission issued its report, President Clinton apologized on behalf of the United States:
It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake. We must and we will instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatemala.
As noted by various critics, however, this apology suggests that U.S. complicity was a regrettable mistake rather than knowing and deliberate support of the atrocities. Perhaps more vexing, the United States did not attempt to make amends for the suffering its conduct caused.
Most recently, advocacy groups urged U.S. Ambassador Arnold Chacon to attend the Rios Montt trial, which he declined to do during the initial weeks. When the trial seemed imperiled by legal maneuvering and threats, Chacon changed his mind and attended. President Obama later dispatched Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen Rapp to urge Guatemala to respect the rule of law. But one could certainly understand the discomfort of U.S. dignitaries as they listened to various experts testify about brutal counterinsurgency techniques adopted almost verbatim from U.S. training manuals, carried out with overt and covert U.S. support.
Other international actors aided and abetted the Guatemalan genocides and crimes against humanity as well. The Generating Terror Report issued by the Jubilee Debt Campaign noted that international financial institutions have evaded responsibility for their role in the atrocities. The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank partnered with successive military regimes and invested close to $1 billion in the illegal and violently imposed Chixoy hydroelectric dam project in the late 1970s and early 1980s--the worst years of repression. According to the Commission, the regime's genocide against Mayan Achi included massacres intended to depopulate communities resisting the dam project. To this day, both banks deny any responsibility and claim immunity from civil liability while efforts to hold them partially responsible for reparations are stalled at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The recent accusation against Perez Molina prompted calls from the United States and other countries for his resignation. At minimum, the Guatemalan attorney general should investigate Perez Molina's role in crimes against humanity, even though he currently enjoys immunity from prosecution.
Likewise, the United States and other international actors must be held to account. This would require declassifying all documents related to U.S. involvement, identifying all who were involved, and issuing indictments where appropriate against U.S. officials who abetted Rios Montt. According to the journalist Allan Nairn, this includes "top officials of the Reagan administration who made the policy" as well as "the U.S. CIA personnel on the ground who worked within the G2, the military intelligence unit that coordinated the assassinations and disappearances; [and] the U.S. military attaches who worked with the Guatemalan generals to develop this sweep-and-massacre strategy in the mountains." Various other measures could also be taken, such as the establishment of a truth commission, Congressional hearings on U.S. complicity, a Congressional resolution, comprehensive reparations, and a sincere apology from President Obama.
The world is witnessing the gradual establishment of new standards of accountability across borders, such as the 2002 creation of the International Criminal Court, in which the United States has notably refused to participate. Instead the United States has been abandoning its moral authority through drone strikes, torture, indefinite detention, and its continued support of Honduran police and military despite mounting evidence of their participation in death squads. Rather than move on and leave the pursuit of justice to Guatemala, the United States should take a step in the right direction by investigating and reconciling with its own culpability.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
For seventeen months in 1982-3, Rios Montt implemented a ruthless counterinsurgency campaign aimed at eradicating the country's "internal enemy," the armed insurgents and their perceived ideological and logistical supporters among the unarmed civilian population. The conflict, which lasted 36 years, saw 200,000 Guatemalans killed, more than 45,000 were disappeared, and approximately 1 million evicted from their homes and communities. Rios Montt was also responsible for the deaths of 1,711 Maya Ixil, an indigenous ethnic group. Through assassination, rape, violent displacement, and starvation, Rios Montt hoped to destroy the fabric of Ixil culture.
As she delivered the guilty verdict, Judge Jazmin Barrios ordered Guatemala's attorney general to continue investigating the crimes for which Rios Montt was convicted. This reckoning would mark the beginning, not the end, of the encounter with Guatemala's horrific past. Her directive did not sit well with military and economic elites who opposed the trial and openly denied that genocide occurred. The powerful business group CACIF (Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations) demanded that the verdict be overturned, and Rios Montt's attorney argued that the conviction would paralyze Guatemala.
Given the politically divisive situation, it was unsurprising when on May 20, in a 3-2 decision of the Constitutional Court, Rios Montt's conviction was annulled. The Court also invalidated all that transpired in the trial after April 19. A simple resumption of the trial after that date would raise a host of legal issues, leaving the status of the case in turmoil. Multiple appeals are pending as well, and the Constitutional Court has yet to rule on the applicability of Guatemala's 1996 amnesty law to Rios Montt, although it clearly excluded genocide and crimes against humanity.
This decision struck a crushing blow to survivors and human rights advocates and raises serious concerns about the independence and integrity of the judiciary. But it is clearly not the end of the fight. Rios Montt can never undo Judge Barrios's declaration of his guilt, and survivors and their supporters will continue their struggle for justice.
Guatemala must be lauded for this momentous, if tenuous, legal reckoning, which never would have happened without the courageous and tireless efforts of survivors, their advocates, and supporters over the last 31 years.
Many developments paved the way for Rios Montt's conviction once he surrendered the immunity he enjoyed as a legislator until 2012. The 1999 UN-sponsored Truth Commission was one of them. The Commission found that 93 percent of the killings in Guatemala were perpetrated by the military, 3 percent by the insurgents, and 4 percent by undetermined parties. The Commission also concluded that successive military regimes had committed genocides in four regions. These efforts helped to pierce the silence surrounding the atrocities and to foster support for survivors.
Moreover, particularly during the presidency of Alvaro Colom (2008-2012), military control over societal institutions had loosened. Some independent judges have since risen through the ranks, and the judiciary is taking on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. International tribunals have also provided Guatemalans pushing for truth and accountability some insulation from threats and harassment. A case brought in Spain under universal jurisdiction resulted in arrest warrant for Rios Montt, and a 2004 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that the July 18, 1982 Plan de Sanchez massacre was part of a genocide carried out by the state of Guatemala against its Mayan Achi population. Outside legal processes helped to collect and validate evidence that later was used against Rios Mont in Guatemala.
In part because the international spotlight has been so effective, the defendants and their allies continue to condemn the "international meddling" in Guatemalan affairs. If these complaints signify anything, it is the danger Guatemalan elites see from a complete and thorough investigation and public legal accounting. For such an outcome threatens even the country's sitting president.
The world outside Guatemala has not played a benign role in that country's horrors.
In the immediate aftermath of the trial, human rights advocates reiterated their call to investigate the role of current President and former General Otto Perez Molina, a graduate from the U.S. School of the Americas and reportedly a CIA asset. In 2011, several human rights organizations presented an Allegation Letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture outlining evidence against Perez Molina. Their motion included a widely circulated videotape of Perez Molina in 1982 standing over battered bodies who had reportedly been subjected to abusive interrogation before being extrajudicially executed. Numerous other witnesses as well as Guatemalan military documents and U.S. cables have directly implicated Perez Molina for crimes against humanity in the Ixil triangle. There is also evidence, including declassified intelligence documents, that Perez Molina continued to perpetrate human rights abuses when he ascended to the position of Director of Military Intelligence in the early 1990s, including complicity in the torture and extrajudicial assassination of insurgent leader Efrain BAmaca VelAsquez, husband of US human rights attorney Jennifer Harbury.
Although Perez Molina has the right as president to deny that genocide occurred or to refuse to give the trial his imprimatur, he was obliged to avoid obstructing the trial and infringing on judicial independence. According to journalist Allan Nairn, Perez Molina actively but unsuccessfully intervened to shut down the trial after a former soldier testifying from an undisclosed location implicated him in open court. When asked whether the guilty verdict changed his opinion that genocide did not occur in Guatemala, Perez Molina replied it did not. Though he did pledge to support the court's decision, Perez Molina observed that multiple appeals lodged throughout the process were still pending and that the highest court had not sanctioned the verdict. Asked to clarify his stance that civilians were fair targets during the conflict, Perez Molina did not back away from his prior justification that "all families [targeted] are with the guerrillas."
But the world outside Guatemala has not played a benign role in that country's horrors. Foreign governments directly and indirectly supported the Guatemalan regime, and these governments, too, bear legal responsibility. The United States in particular has bloody hands. The United States provided arms, training, funding, intelligence and boots on the ground to the Guatemalan military from the 1954 coup forward, including during the worst years of the killings. The UN Truth Commission held the United States responsible for supporting the military regime, and multiple experts in the genocide trial testified to U.S. influence and intervention in the conflict. Charges of U.S. complicity are not just the rallying cry of anti-imperialist critics--they have been confirmed repeatedly by official U.S. government documents.
Jose Efrain Rios Montt / Plaza Publica (cc)
Robert Parry has brought this evidence to the public's attention. For instance, he cites a newly disclosed document from the National Archives, which confirms Reagan's 1981 policy supporting not only the extermination of the armed rebels, but also the elimination of the insurgency's presumed logistical and ideological support among civilians. One memo outlines U.S. concerns about public allegations of indiscriminate killing, but the focus seems to be on reputational damage rather than protection of innocents. In the memo, a member of the U.S. administration tells a Guatemalan official that American support would be easier to secure "if you could give me your assurance that you will take steps to halt official involvement in the killing of persons not involved with the guerrilla forces or their civilian support mechanisms." Documents uncovered at the Reagan Presidential Library establish his administration's efforts to thwart a congressional ban on equipping the Guatemalan military by enlisting the assistance of Israel.
These documents make it clear that the United States wanted to advance its geopolitical and economic interests in Guatemala, irrespective of the human toll. The Reagan White House sought to dismiss the atrocities, which it asserted were either committed by insurgents or manipulated by the press. Despite his administration's clear knowledge of conditions on the ground, President Reagan himself declared, "President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. . . . I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."
In 1999, after the UN Commission issued its report, President Clinton apologized on behalf of the United States:
It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake. We must and we will instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatemala.
As noted by various critics, however, this apology suggests that U.S. complicity was a regrettable mistake rather than knowing and deliberate support of the atrocities. Perhaps more vexing, the United States did not attempt to make amends for the suffering its conduct caused.
Most recently, advocacy groups urged U.S. Ambassador Arnold Chacon to attend the Rios Montt trial, which he declined to do during the initial weeks. When the trial seemed imperiled by legal maneuvering and threats, Chacon changed his mind and attended. President Obama later dispatched Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen Rapp to urge Guatemala to respect the rule of law. But one could certainly understand the discomfort of U.S. dignitaries as they listened to various experts testify about brutal counterinsurgency techniques adopted almost verbatim from U.S. training manuals, carried out with overt and covert U.S. support.
Other international actors aided and abetted the Guatemalan genocides and crimes against humanity as well. The Generating Terror Report issued by the Jubilee Debt Campaign noted that international financial institutions have evaded responsibility for their role in the atrocities. The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank partnered with successive military regimes and invested close to $1 billion in the illegal and violently imposed Chixoy hydroelectric dam project in the late 1970s and early 1980s--the worst years of repression. According to the Commission, the regime's genocide against Mayan Achi included massacres intended to depopulate communities resisting the dam project. To this day, both banks deny any responsibility and claim immunity from civil liability while efforts to hold them partially responsible for reparations are stalled at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The recent accusation against Perez Molina prompted calls from the United States and other countries for his resignation. At minimum, the Guatemalan attorney general should investigate Perez Molina's role in crimes against humanity, even though he currently enjoys immunity from prosecution.
Likewise, the United States and other international actors must be held to account. This would require declassifying all documents related to U.S. involvement, identifying all who were involved, and issuing indictments where appropriate against U.S. officials who abetted Rios Montt. According to the journalist Allan Nairn, this includes "top officials of the Reagan administration who made the policy" as well as "the U.S. CIA personnel on the ground who worked within the G2, the military intelligence unit that coordinated the assassinations and disappearances; [and] the U.S. military attaches who worked with the Guatemalan generals to develop this sweep-and-massacre strategy in the mountains." Various other measures could also be taken, such as the establishment of a truth commission, Congressional hearings on U.S. complicity, a Congressional resolution, comprehensive reparations, and a sincere apology from President Obama.
The world is witnessing the gradual establishment of new standards of accountability across borders, such as the 2002 creation of the International Criminal Court, in which the United States has notably refused to participate. Instead the United States has been abandoning its moral authority through drone strikes, torture, indefinite detention, and its continued support of Honduran police and military despite mounting evidence of their participation in death squads. Rather than move on and leave the pursuit of justice to Guatemala, the United States should take a step in the right direction by investigating and reconciling with its own culpability.
For seventeen months in 1982-3, Rios Montt implemented a ruthless counterinsurgency campaign aimed at eradicating the country's "internal enemy," the armed insurgents and their perceived ideological and logistical supporters among the unarmed civilian population. The conflict, which lasted 36 years, saw 200,000 Guatemalans killed, more than 45,000 were disappeared, and approximately 1 million evicted from their homes and communities. Rios Montt was also responsible for the deaths of 1,711 Maya Ixil, an indigenous ethnic group. Through assassination, rape, violent displacement, and starvation, Rios Montt hoped to destroy the fabric of Ixil culture.
As she delivered the guilty verdict, Judge Jazmin Barrios ordered Guatemala's attorney general to continue investigating the crimes for which Rios Montt was convicted. This reckoning would mark the beginning, not the end, of the encounter with Guatemala's horrific past. Her directive did not sit well with military and economic elites who opposed the trial and openly denied that genocide occurred. The powerful business group CACIF (Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations) demanded that the verdict be overturned, and Rios Montt's attorney argued that the conviction would paralyze Guatemala.
Given the politically divisive situation, it was unsurprising when on May 20, in a 3-2 decision of the Constitutional Court, Rios Montt's conviction was annulled. The Court also invalidated all that transpired in the trial after April 19. A simple resumption of the trial after that date would raise a host of legal issues, leaving the status of the case in turmoil. Multiple appeals are pending as well, and the Constitutional Court has yet to rule on the applicability of Guatemala's 1996 amnesty law to Rios Montt, although it clearly excluded genocide and crimes against humanity.
This decision struck a crushing blow to survivors and human rights advocates and raises serious concerns about the independence and integrity of the judiciary. But it is clearly not the end of the fight. Rios Montt can never undo Judge Barrios's declaration of his guilt, and survivors and their supporters will continue their struggle for justice.
Guatemala must be lauded for this momentous, if tenuous, legal reckoning, which never would have happened without the courageous and tireless efforts of survivors, their advocates, and supporters over the last 31 years.
Many developments paved the way for Rios Montt's conviction once he surrendered the immunity he enjoyed as a legislator until 2012. The 1999 UN-sponsored Truth Commission was one of them. The Commission found that 93 percent of the killings in Guatemala were perpetrated by the military, 3 percent by the insurgents, and 4 percent by undetermined parties. The Commission also concluded that successive military regimes had committed genocides in four regions. These efforts helped to pierce the silence surrounding the atrocities and to foster support for survivors.
Moreover, particularly during the presidency of Alvaro Colom (2008-2012), military control over societal institutions had loosened. Some independent judges have since risen through the ranks, and the judiciary is taking on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. International tribunals have also provided Guatemalans pushing for truth and accountability some insulation from threats and harassment. A case brought in Spain under universal jurisdiction resulted in arrest warrant for Rios Montt, and a 2004 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that the July 18, 1982 Plan de Sanchez massacre was part of a genocide carried out by the state of Guatemala against its Mayan Achi population. Outside legal processes helped to collect and validate evidence that later was used against Rios Mont in Guatemala.
In part because the international spotlight has been so effective, the defendants and their allies continue to condemn the "international meddling" in Guatemalan affairs. If these complaints signify anything, it is the danger Guatemalan elites see from a complete and thorough investigation and public legal accounting. For such an outcome threatens even the country's sitting president.
The world outside Guatemala has not played a benign role in that country's horrors.
In the immediate aftermath of the trial, human rights advocates reiterated their call to investigate the role of current President and former General Otto Perez Molina, a graduate from the U.S. School of the Americas and reportedly a CIA asset. In 2011, several human rights organizations presented an Allegation Letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture outlining evidence against Perez Molina. Their motion included a widely circulated videotape of Perez Molina in 1982 standing over battered bodies who had reportedly been subjected to abusive interrogation before being extrajudicially executed. Numerous other witnesses as well as Guatemalan military documents and U.S. cables have directly implicated Perez Molina for crimes against humanity in the Ixil triangle. There is also evidence, including declassified intelligence documents, that Perez Molina continued to perpetrate human rights abuses when he ascended to the position of Director of Military Intelligence in the early 1990s, including complicity in the torture and extrajudicial assassination of insurgent leader Efrain BAmaca VelAsquez, husband of US human rights attorney Jennifer Harbury.
Although Perez Molina has the right as president to deny that genocide occurred or to refuse to give the trial his imprimatur, he was obliged to avoid obstructing the trial and infringing on judicial independence. According to journalist Allan Nairn, Perez Molina actively but unsuccessfully intervened to shut down the trial after a former soldier testifying from an undisclosed location implicated him in open court. When asked whether the guilty verdict changed his opinion that genocide did not occur in Guatemala, Perez Molina replied it did not. Though he did pledge to support the court's decision, Perez Molina observed that multiple appeals lodged throughout the process were still pending and that the highest court had not sanctioned the verdict. Asked to clarify his stance that civilians were fair targets during the conflict, Perez Molina did not back away from his prior justification that "all families [targeted] are with the guerrillas."
But the world outside Guatemala has not played a benign role in that country's horrors. Foreign governments directly and indirectly supported the Guatemalan regime, and these governments, too, bear legal responsibility. The United States in particular has bloody hands. The United States provided arms, training, funding, intelligence and boots on the ground to the Guatemalan military from the 1954 coup forward, including during the worst years of the killings. The UN Truth Commission held the United States responsible for supporting the military regime, and multiple experts in the genocide trial testified to U.S. influence and intervention in the conflict. Charges of U.S. complicity are not just the rallying cry of anti-imperialist critics--they have been confirmed repeatedly by official U.S. government documents.
Jose Efrain Rios Montt / Plaza Publica (cc)
Robert Parry has brought this evidence to the public's attention. For instance, he cites a newly disclosed document from the National Archives, which confirms Reagan's 1981 policy supporting not only the extermination of the armed rebels, but also the elimination of the insurgency's presumed logistical and ideological support among civilians. One memo outlines U.S. concerns about public allegations of indiscriminate killing, but the focus seems to be on reputational damage rather than protection of innocents. In the memo, a member of the U.S. administration tells a Guatemalan official that American support would be easier to secure "if you could give me your assurance that you will take steps to halt official involvement in the killing of persons not involved with the guerrilla forces or their civilian support mechanisms." Documents uncovered at the Reagan Presidential Library establish his administration's efforts to thwart a congressional ban on equipping the Guatemalan military by enlisting the assistance of Israel.
These documents make it clear that the United States wanted to advance its geopolitical and economic interests in Guatemala, irrespective of the human toll. The Reagan White House sought to dismiss the atrocities, which it asserted were either committed by insurgents or manipulated by the press. Despite his administration's clear knowledge of conditions on the ground, President Reagan himself declared, "President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. . . . I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."
In 1999, after the UN Commission issued its report, President Clinton apologized on behalf of the United States:
It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake. We must and we will instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatemala.
As noted by various critics, however, this apology suggests that U.S. complicity was a regrettable mistake rather than knowing and deliberate support of the atrocities. Perhaps more vexing, the United States did not attempt to make amends for the suffering its conduct caused.
Most recently, advocacy groups urged U.S. Ambassador Arnold Chacon to attend the Rios Montt trial, which he declined to do during the initial weeks. When the trial seemed imperiled by legal maneuvering and threats, Chacon changed his mind and attended. President Obama later dispatched Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen Rapp to urge Guatemala to respect the rule of law. But one could certainly understand the discomfort of U.S. dignitaries as they listened to various experts testify about brutal counterinsurgency techniques adopted almost verbatim from U.S. training manuals, carried out with overt and covert U.S. support.
Other international actors aided and abetted the Guatemalan genocides and crimes against humanity as well. The Generating Terror Report issued by the Jubilee Debt Campaign noted that international financial institutions have evaded responsibility for their role in the atrocities. The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank partnered with successive military regimes and invested close to $1 billion in the illegal and violently imposed Chixoy hydroelectric dam project in the late 1970s and early 1980s--the worst years of repression. According to the Commission, the regime's genocide against Mayan Achi included massacres intended to depopulate communities resisting the dam project. To this day, both banks deny any responsibility and claim immunity from civil liability while efforts to hold them partially responsible for reparations are stalled at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The recent accusation against Perez Molina prompted calls from the United States and other countries for his resignation. At minimum, the Guatemalan attorney general should investigate Perez Molina's role in crimes against humanity, even though he currently enjoys immunity from prosecution.
Likewise, the United States and other international actors must be held to account. This would require declassifying all documents related to U.S. involvement, identifying all who were involved, and issuing indictments where appropriate against U.S. officials who abetted Rios Montt. According to the journalist Allan Nairn, this includes "top officials of the Reagan administration who made the policy" as well as "the U.S. CIA personnel on the ground who worked within the G2, the military intelligence unit that coordinated the assassinations and disappearances; [and] the U.S. military attaches who worked with the Guatemalan generals to develop this sweep-and-massacre strategy in the mountains." Various other measures could also be taken, such as the establishment of a truth commission, Congressional hearings on U.S. complicity, a Congressional resolution, comprehensive reparations, and a sincere apology from President Obama.
The world is witnessing the gradual establishment of new standards of accountability across borders, such as the 2002 creation of the International Criminal Court, in which the United States has notably refused to participate. Instead the United States has been abandoning its moral authority through drone strikes, torture, indefinite detention, and its continued support of Honduran police and military despite mounting evidence of their participation in death squads. Rather than move on and leave the pursuit of justice to Guatemala, the United States should take a step in the right direction by investigating and reconciling with its own culpability.
Khalil's wife said that "officers in plain clothes—who refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names—forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me."
The family of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States now at risk of deportation because he helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last spring, on Friday released a video of his recent arrest by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents in New York City, which has sparked legal battles and protests.
"You're watching the most terrifying moment of my life," Khalil's wife, Noor, said in a statement about the two-minute video. "This felt like a kidnapping because it was: Officers in plain clothes—who refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names—forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me."
"Everyone should be alarmed and urgently calling for the freedom of Mahmoud and all other students under attack for their advocacy for Palestinian human rights."
"They threatened to take me too, even though we were calm and fully cooperating. For the next 38 hours after this video, neither I or our lawyers knew where Mahmoud was being held. Now, he's over 1,000 miles from home, still being wrongfully detained by U.S. immigration," said Noor, whose husband is detained at a facility in Jena, Louisiana.
Noor, who is eight months pregnant, noted that "Mahmoud has repeatedly warned of growing threats from Columbia University and the U.S. government unjustly targeting students who want to see an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza. Now, the Trump administration and DHS are targeting him, and other students too."
"Mahmoud is clearly the first of many to be illegally repressed for their speech in support of Palestinian rights," she added. "Everyone should be alarmed and urgently calling for the freedom of Mahmoud and all other students under attack for their advocacy for Palestinian human rights."
Khalil, who finished his graduate studies at Columbia in December, is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent. He was living in the United States with a green card until his arrest on Saturday. In response to a filing by his legal team—which includes Amy Greer from Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project—a judge has temporarily blocked his deportation.
The ACLU and its New York arm have joined Khalil's legal team, and his attorneys filed an amended petition and complaint on Thursday. NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said that with the new "filing, we are making it crystal clear that no president can arrest, detain, or deport anyone for disagreeing with the government. The Trump administration has selectively targeted Mr. Khalil, a student, husband, and father-to-be who has not been accused of a single crime, to send a message of just how far they will go to crack down on dissent."
"But we at the NYCLU and ACLU won't stand for it—under the Constitution, the Trump administration has no basis to continue this cruel weaponization of Mr. Khalil's life," Lieberman added. "The court must release Mr. Khalil immediately and let him go home to his family in New York, where he belongs. Ideas are not illegal, and dissent is not grounds for deportation."
Samah Sisay of CCR reiterated those messages as the arrest video circulated on Friday, saying that "Mr. Khalil was taken by plainclothes DHS agents in front of his pregnant wife without any legal justification. Mr. Khalil must be freed because the government cannot use these coercive tactics to unlawfully suppress his First Amendment protected speech in support of Palestinian rights."
"Between his massive conflicts of interest across the healthcare sector and his endorsement of further privatizing Medicare, Oz would be a threat to the health of tens of millions of Americans," said one opponent.
Progressive watchdog organizations responded to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee's Friday hearing for Dr. Mehmet Oz by again sounding the alarm about the heart surgeon and former television host nominated to lead a key federal healthcare agency.
Since President Donald Trump announced Oz as his nominee for administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last November, opponents have spotlighted the doctor's promotion of unproven products, investments in companies with interests in the federal agency, and support for expanding Medicare Advantage during an unsuccessful U.S. Senate run in 2022.
"Dr. Oz's career promoting dubious medical treatments and pseudoscience often for personal financial gain should immediately disqualify him from serving in any public health capacity, let alone in a top administration health post," Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk said in a Friday statement.
"Dr. Oz's nomination is part of President Trump's grand plan to enrich his corporate donors and wealthy friends while the rest of us get higher costs, less coverage, and weakened protections."
In December, Carrk's group found that based on disclosures from Oz's 2022 run against U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), the Republican doctor reported "up to $56 million in investments in three companies" with direct CMS interests—including Sharecare, which became the "exclusive in-home care supplemental benefit program" for 1.5 million Medicare Advantage enrollees.
A spokesperson said at the time that Oz has since divested from Sharecare. However, critics have still expressed concern about how the nominee's confirmation could boost Republican efforts to expand Medicare Advantage—health insurance plans for seniors administered by private companies rather than the government.
"As a self-interested advocate of privatizing Medicare at a higher cost and more denials of care for seniors, Dr. Oz is surely eager to enact the Trump-Republican budget plan to gut Medicare and Medicaid and jeopardize health coverage for millions of Americans—all to pay for more tax breaks for billionaires and price gouging corporations," said Carrk. "Dr. Oz's nomination is part of President Trump's grand plan to enrich his corporate donors and wealthy friends while the rest of us get higher costs, less coverage, and weakened protections—especially those with preexisting conditions."
As he faces Senate confirmation, remember that Dr. Oz: -Pushed Medicare privatization plans on his show -Owns ~$600k in stock in private insurers -Has ties to pyramid scheme companies that promote fake medical cures His main qualification to oversee CMS is loyalty to Trump.
— Robert Reich ( @rbreich.bsky.social) March 14, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, has been similarly critical of Oz, and remained so after senators questioned him on Friday, saying in a statement that "Mehmet Oz showed he is profoundly unqualified to lead any part of our healthcare system, let alone an agency as important as CMS."
"Between his massive conflicts of interest across the healthcare sector and his endorsement of further privatizing Medicare, Oz would be a threat to the health of tens of millions of Americans," Weissman warned. "Privatized Medicare Advantage plans deliver inferior care and cost taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually in excess costs."
"It is time for President Trump to put down the remote, stop finding nominees on television, and instead nominate people with actual experience and a belief in the importance of protecting crucial health programs like Medicare and Medicaid," he argued, taking aim at not only the president but also his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the conspiracy theorist now running the Department of Health and Human Services.
Weissman declared that "Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr. fail to put the American people first as they seek to gut agencies and make dangerous cuts to health programs to fund tax cuts for billionaires. Oz indicated he would not oppose such cuts, bringing more destruction to lifesaving programs. Oz has no place in government and should be roundly rejected by every senator."
During a Friday exchange with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the committee's ranking member, Oz refused to decisively commit to opposing cuts to Medicaid. As the Alliance for Retired Americans highlighted, Oz kept that up when given opportunities to revise his answer by Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
Other moments from the hearing that garnered attention included Oz's exchange with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) about Affordable Care Act tax credits and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) calling out the doctor for his unwillingness "to take accountability for" his "promotion of unproven snake oil remedies" to millions of TV viewers.
Betar—which the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League has blacklisted after comments like "not enough" babies were killed in Gaza—says it provided "thousands of names" for possible arrest and expulsion.
Betar, the international far-right pro-Israel group that took credit for the Department of Homeland Security's arrest of former Columbia University graduate student and permanent U.S. resident Mahmoud Khalil for protesting the annihilation of Gaza, claimed this week that it has sent "thousands of names" of Palestine defenders to Trump administration officials for possible deportation.
"Jihadis have no place in civilized nations," Betar said on social media Friday following the publication of a Guardian article on the extremist group's activities.
Earlier this week, Betar said: "We told you we have been working on deportations and will continue to do so. Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month. You heard it here first. Those who support jihad and intifada and originate in terrorist states will be sent back to those lands."
Betar has been gloating about last week's arrest of Khalil, the lead negotiator for the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest during the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
On Thursday, immigration officers arrested another Columbia Gaza protester, Leqaa Kordia—a Palestinian from the illegally occupied West Bank—for allegedly overstaying her expired student visa. Kordia was also arrested last April during one of the Columbia campus protests against the Gaza onslaught.
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian doctoral student at Columbia whose visa was revoked on March 5 for alleged involvement "in activities supporting" Hamas—the Palestinian resistance group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government—used the Customs and Border Protection's self-deportation app and, according to media reports, has left the country.
Khalil and Kordia's arrests come as the Trump administration targets Columbia and other schools over pro-Palestinian protests under the guise of combating antisemitism, despite the Ivy League university's violent crackdown on demonstrations and revocation of degrees from some pro-Palestine activists.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who in January signed an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who took part in protests against Israel's war on Gaza, called Khalil's detention "the first arrest of many to come."
The Department of Justice announced Friday that it is investigating whether pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the school violated federal anti-terrorism laws. This followed Thursday's search of two Columbia dorm rooms by DHS agents and the cancellation earlier this month of $400 million worth of funding and contracts for Columbia because the Trump administration says university officials haven't done enough to tackle alleged antisemitism on campus.
On Friday, Betar named Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian studying philosophy at Columbia, as its next target.
Critics have voiced alarm about Betar's activities, pointing to the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League's recent designation of the organization as a hate group. Founded in 1923 by the early Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Betar has a long history of extremism. Its members—who included former Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin—took part in the Zionist terror campaign against Palestinian Arabs and British forces occupying Palestine in the 1940s.
Today, Betar supports Kahanism—a Jewish supremacist and apartheid movement named after Meir Kahane, an Orthodox rabbi convicted of terrorism before being assassinated in 1990—and is linked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party. The group has called for the ethnic cleansing and Israeli recolonization of Gaza. During Israel's assault on the coastal enclave, which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case, its account on the social media site X responded to the publication of a list of thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces by saying: "Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!"
Ross Glick, who led the U.S. chapter of Betar until last month, told The Guardian that he has met with bipartisan members of Congress who support the group's efforts, naming lawmakers including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.). Glick also claimed to have the support of "collaborators" who use artificial intelligence and facial recognition to help identify pro-Palestine activists. Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department said it was launching an AI-powered "catch and revoke" program to cancel the visas of international students deemed supportive of Hamas.
Betar isn't alone in aggressively targeting Palestine defenders. The group Canary Mission—which said it is "delighted" about Khalil's "deserved consequences"—publishes an online database containing personal information about people it deems antisemitic, and this week released a video naming five other international students it says are "linked to campus extremism at Columbia."
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia who was temporarily banned from campus last year after harassing university employees, and Columbia student David Lederer, have waged what Khalil called "a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign" against him and other activists.
Meanwhile, opponents of the Trump administration's crackdown on constitutionally protected protest rights have rallied in defense of Khalil and the First Amendment. Nearly 100 Jewish-led demonstrators were arrested Thursday during a protest in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City demanding Khalil's release.
"We know what happens when an autocratic regime starts taking away our rights and scapegoating and we will not be silent," said Sonya Meyerson-Knox, the communications director for Jewish Voice for Peace. "Come for one—face us all."