|
Amnesty International - Death
of army intelligence official implicated in Gerardi-murder must be investigated
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PRESS RELEASE
AI Index: AMR 34/007/2003
(Public)
News Service No: 032
13 February 2003
Guatemala: Death of army intelligence official implicated in Gerardi-murder must
be investigated
Amnesty International today expressed grave concern at the murder of Sergeant
José Obdulio Villanueva during a Guatemala City prison uprising on Wednesday.
Sergeant Villanueva was the lowest ranking of the three former members of the
Presidential Chiefs of Staff military intelligence agency, sentenced to 30
years imprisonment in July 2001 for planning the 1998 extrajudicial execution of
Bishop Juan José Gerardi.
"We fear that Villanueva's murder may have been orchestrated, to remove him
as a potential witness against other military higher-ups allegedly involved in
the Bishop's murder against whom proceedings remain open," Amnesty
International said.
Sergeant Villanueva's murder comes in the wake of the killing in December of Noé
Gómez Limón, an important witness in the Gerardi case, and the brother of
another witness whose testimony was considered a key element in the initial
convictions of Villanueva and his two superiors. Gómez's death brings to 10 the
number of witnesses in the Gerardi case known to have been killed.
Only the day before Sergeant Villanueva was killed, the Guatemalan Supreme Court
dismissed the October 2002 Appeal Court decision to annul the convictions of
Villanueva, his two superior officers and a priest, convicted as accessories to
the Gerardi murder.
Amnesty International considered the Appeal Court's decision a
severe setback to Guatemalan justice and the organization warmly welcomed the
move by the Supreme Court to reject that ruling. It noted, however, that the
lawyer for the convicted priest has already appealed the new Supreme Court
decision to Guatemala's Constitutional Court.
"If he or the two remaining imprisoned military officials are eventually
successful in appealing their convictions and the case is forced to re-open in
Court, we fear it will be more difficult to sustain the original convictions,
because so many witnesses will have either been eliminated or frightened into
silence," Amnesty International said.
"It is vital that the uprising at the prison is investigated in depth, to
determine not only who was responsible for the prisoners' deaths, but also to
identify any members of the police, military or prison guard unit that may have
played a role in orchestrating or permitting the riot."
Background
Sergeant José Obdulio Villanueva was amongst seven prisoners killed in the riot
in the capital's Zone 18 Remand Prison; four including Villanueva were
decapitated.
Members of street gangs, imprisoned for common law offences, allegedly bribed
guards to let them out of their cells and then launched an attack on the sector
of the prison where police and military officials detained for human rights
abuses are held. They included Sergeant Villanueva and the other two
Presidential Chiefs of Staff officers convicted for the Gerardi killing, and the
military officials held in connection with the 1990 extrajudicial execution of
anthropologist Myrna Mack.
The common law prisoners, armed with firearms and grenades smuggled into the
prison over the past several months, reportedly targeted the police and military
detainees because they were angry at the special privileges they enjoyed in
prison and the authority this allowed them to exercise over other prisoners.
The military prisoners have now been transferred to a high security prison
outside Guatemala City. They charge that they had been warning prison
authorities about the arms coming into the prison since last December, but that
nothing had been done. Human rights defenders in Guatemala said they too knew
the uprising was coming, but believed that it was orchestrated to serve as the
excuse to illegally move military officers held there to military prisons.
Bishop Gerardi was killed outside his home in April 1998, two days after he had
publicly presented the findings of the in-depth inquiry carried out by the
Guatemalan Catholic church into the gross human rights abuses committed during
Guatemala's long-term civil conflict. The report laid the responsibility for the
vast majority of the abuses squarely at the door of the Guatemalan military and
their civilian allies, the civil patrols.
The landmark convictions in the Gerardi case, the first against military
officers for human rights abuses, had been widely hailed in both Guatemala and
abroad as indication that the Guatemalan legal system could be made to function
to bring perpetrators of human rights abuses to justice, no matter what their
rank or position. However, the convictions came at a high cost: in addition to
the witnesses killed, by the time the case against Sergeant Villanueva and his
two superiors came to trial, dozens of others involved in the case had reported
serious intimidation, and another dozen, including a member of Presidential
Chiefs of Staff who implicated colleagues in the murder, had fled the
country. A judge and three prosecutors involved in the case were also forced to
flee Guatemala, in fear of their lives.
Public Document
****************************************
For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London,
UK, on +44 20 7413 5566
Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org
For latest human rights news view http://news.amnesty.org
Dr. Roddy Brett
Campaigner, Coordinador de Campañas, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panamá, Venezuela
Americas Program, Programa de las Américas
International Secretariat, Secretariado Internacional,
Amnesty International, Amnistía Internacional
1, Easton Street,
London, Londres, WC1X 0DW
Tel: 44 (0) 207 413 5692
FAX: 44 (0) 207 956 1157
E-mail, Correo electrónico: rbrett@amnesty.org
http://www.amnesty.org
|
