Trial heightens tensions
By PAUL JEFFREY
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Guatemala
City
After three years of investigations that often resembled comic
opera, repeated death threats, exiled witnesses and judges, missing evidence
and bizarre political mischief, the trial of five people accused of killing
Bishop Juan Gerardi got underway March 23 in a heavily guarded auditorium of
the Guatemalan Supreme Court.
Three military officials, a priest and a cook face a three-judge
panel in a closely watched trial that is expected to last at least two months.
Gerardi, the auxiliary bishop of Guatemala City, headed the archdioceses
feisty human rights office. On April 26, 1998, just two days after he released
a landmark report delineating responsibility for violence during the
countrys lengthy civil war, Gerardi was attacked in the garage of the San
Sebastian Parish residence where he lived, not far from the presidential
palace.
The killer used a large block of concrete to strike the bishop at
least 14 times in the head. The judicial proceedings are taking place in an
atmosphere of heightened tension. Rumors of a military coup have circulated for
weeks.
Newspapers carry lurid details of a scandal linking several
bankers and top government officials. And the head of the Guatemalan Congress,
retired Gen. Efraín Rios Montt, after avoiding prosecution here and
abroad for condoning massacres two decades ago, is defying court orders that he
and several other legislators step down to face trial for illegally altering a
law raising taxes on alcoholic beverages.
Its really democracy thats on trial here,
Susan Peacock, senior associate for Guatemala at the Washington Office on Latin
America, told NCR.
Guatemala is in the middle of a crisis, a critical moment in
which the countrys leaders and institutions have to decide whether
theyre going to respect the rule of law or let impunity continue to
undermine the construction of a country at peace.
The five defendants include Col. Disrael Lima Estrada and his son,
Capt. Byron Lima Oliva, and Sgt. José Villanueva. Lima Estrada is a
retired military intelligence official. Lima Oliva and Villanueva are officials
of the elite and brutal Presidential Guard. Also charged are Fr. Mario Orantes,
a priest who shared the San Sebastian rectory with Gerardi, and Margarita
López, the parish housekeeper and cook. The military officials are
charged with extrajudicial execution, Orantes with murder, and López
with helping to cover up the crime.
The night before the trials scheduled March 22 opening, two
grenades were tossed at the home of Iris Barrios, one of the three judges
hearing the case. The impact shattered windows and burst a water pipe. It
didnt make me afraid. It made me mad, she said. All three judges
have been provided police protection.
The accused military officers refused to leave their cells on the
trials opening day. Lima Oliva was finally dragged into the courtroom,
hollering about communist conspiracies. His father complained of medical
problems that caused the judges to suspend the proceedings for a day.
On March 23, chief prosecutor Leopoldo Zeissig laid out his case,
arguing that Gerardis detailed report on war atrocities directly
caused his death.
Zeissig claimed that Lima Estrada was terrified that Gerardi might
be called into court to testify about atrocities committed by the military.
Edgar Gutiérrez, director of Gerardis historical
investigation, testified April 4 that Lima Estrada was mentioned several times
in the church report. Gutiérrez said the bishop had planned to support
war victims in several court cases against army officers responsible for the
violence. Gutiérrez claimed that Gerardis assassination inhibited
such legal action and successfully distracted Guatemalan society form the
recommendations of the church report.
Three lawyers from the archdiocesan rights office have been
granted official standing in the case and sit at the prosecution table. The
prosecution team has no witness to the killing, so it is relying on evidence
found at the crime scene, particularly the location of bloodstains inside the
residence, as well as the testimony of indigents who slept in a park in front
of the parish residence.
One of them, Rubén Chanax Sontay, says he saw Villanueva
and Lima Oliva arrive in an official vehicle and run into the garage, where
Orantes was waiting.
Chanax Sontay said he later saw Orantes emerge from the garage,
look around, and then close the door. The prosecution argues that Lima Estrada
directed the killing from a nearby bar, where witnesses said it took him more
than two hours to drink a beer because he was constantly talking on a cellular
phone.
The testimony of Chanax Sontay was presented to the court in
writing. He is one of eight people linked to the case -- including judges,
prosecutors and witnesses -- who have been forced to flee the country after
being attacked or receiving threats on their lives. Another judge and
prosecutor quit after being accused of bias toward the military.
Several Presidential Guard officials testified in the opening days
of the trial, but their testimony was often contradictory.
Orantes, who has been hospitalized under police guard, comes to
court in a wheelchair, dressed in pajamas, robe and slippers. A nurse sits
nearby, giving him pills and keeping an oxygen tank ready. Zeissig suspects it
was Orantes who murdered the bishop, and that Villanueva and Lima Oliva arrived
to remove incriminating evidence before Orantes called the police.
Supporters of Orantes caution that this scenario could have been
created by army intelligence officials, experts in misleading investigators.
Orantes case wasnt helped by a police psychiatrist who testified
that in an early interview the priest lamented that Gerardi had died in
my room, I mean, in the garage. At one point in the investigation,
Orantes dog, Baloo, was actually taken into custody for involvement in
the killing. Baloo has since died.
Bishop Mario Rios Montt, the brother of Gen. Rios Montt and the
successor to Gerardi as head of the human rights office, took the stand March
30. He told the courtroom that the murder was delicately prepared,
technically executed, and had consequences that were well thought out
beforehand.
Bishop Rios Montt suggested that those who stand accused of the
crime are not the ones ultimately responsible for ordering the killing.
The game of chess teaches us that in order to save the king it is
sometimes necessary to sacrifice the pawns, he said.
The prelate shocked the courtroom when he said he was offered a
deal by the brother of then President Álvaro Arzú. Bishop Rios
Montt said that José Antonio Arzú told him that if the church
would sign a statement absolving the military from responsibility for
Gerardis killing, then the government would in turn abstain from
prosecuting Orantes for any possible involvement in the case. The bishop said
he turned down the deal.
Orantes has always maintained his innocence and says he
doesnt know who killed Gerardi. Yet many observers suspect Orantes knows
more than hes let on and hope hell open up when called to testify.
I hope that when he finally gives his declaration, he will say all that
he can, said Álvaro Ramazzini, the bishop of San Marcos.
Until now, there has been no judicial obligation under which he could be
punished for not telling the truth, so hes had the right to withhold
whatever he wanted.
The possible involvement of Orantes in the killing is not the only
embarrassing element of the trial for church leaders. That became evident on
March 29 when Fr. Efraín Hernández and his niece, Ana Lucia
Escobar, were called to testify. Hernández was chancellor of the
archdiocese at the time of the killing, and Escobar is a leader of the Valle De
Sol criminal gang, a group that specializes in kidnapping, drug trafficking,
car theft and the robbery of religious icons. Escobar has long used the
prominence of her uncle to gain introductions to wealthy people who later get
robbed or kidnapped.
Both Hernández and Escobar, who were among the first to
arrive on the scene of the crime, were called before the court March 29, yet
their testimony conflicted with each other and with that of Dagoberto Escobar,
Ana Lucias cousin, who also testified. Among other things, they disagreed
about who called to advise them of the killing, who answered the phone, and
what they knew before driving together to San Sebastian.
Such contradictions will play into defense strategies to raise
other theories about who killed Gerardi. Lima Oliva has long complained that
government investigators refused to pursue alternate hypotheses, particularly
that a member of the Valle del Sol gang was in the house to rob icons, having
been provided with duplicate keys by Escobar, when Gerardi arrived home
unexpectedly.
Luis Carlos García, a member of the gang who some believed
could link the gang to the Gerardi case, was shot in the head on Jan. 29 while
serving a sentence in a Guatemala City prison. His killer remains
unidentified.
Lima Oliva argues that ideology and institutional survival have
motivated prosecutors to ignore his hypothesis of the crime. They look
for military culprits as a way to maintain the funding of the churchs
human rights office, Lima Oliva said. Along with other
nongovernmental organizations, rather than trying to project a dignified image
of our country in the world, they want to denigrate it.
Its true that Guatemalas image is at stake these days.
As the trial moves slowly through the list of 209 witnesses expected to
testify, the proceedings are expected to reveal a lot about Guatemalas
tenuous democracy and the forces that continue to block its flowering in the
wake of the war.
Democracy has always been fragile here, Ramazzini, the
San Marcos bishop, told NCR. We havent yet managed to
establish firm foundations for democratic practice.
National Catholic Reporter, April 20,
2001
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