Efrain Rios Montt, Guatemalan Dictator Convicted of Genocide, Dies at 91
Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, who as dictator of Guatemala in the 1980s ordered fierce tactics to suppress a guerrilla insurgency and was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, died on Sunday in Guatemala City. He was 91.
In the panoply of commanders who turned much of Central America into a killing field in the 1980s, General Ríos Montt was one of the most murderous. He was convicted in 2013 of trying to exterminate the Ixil ethnic group, a Mayan Indian community whose villages were wiped out by his forces.
A Guatemalan judge found that the general had known about the systematic massacres, in the hillside hamlets of the El Quiché department, and had done nothing to stop them or the aerial bombardment of refugees who had fled to the mountains.
The conviction, seen as a landmark in human rights law, was overturned shortly afterward. At his death he was being retried in absentia.
At: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/obituaries/efrain-rios-montt-guatemala-dead.html
Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and friend in 1982. The propaganda pamphlet held by Ríos Montt, which reads "this government is committed to change" was prepared by the Reagan White House for the occasion.
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Ex-Guatemala dictator Ríos Montt, plagued by genocide charges, dies
Reuters
By Sofia Menchu
Reuters•April 1, 2018
By Sofia Menchu
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Former Guatemalan military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, hounded by charges of genocide for decades, died on Sunday aged 91, leaving bitter memories of his bloody stewardship of the Central American nation during its civil war.
Thousands of mostly rural Maya civilians were victims of massacre, rape and torture under a "scorched earth" policy implemented during his 17-month rule between 1982 and 1983 at the height of the Cold War-era conflict.
. . .
A United Nations-backed truth commission report released after the 1996 peace accords found that the army and paramilitary groups were responsible for over 90 percent of more than 400 massacres during the war.
. . .
Joining the military academy in 1943, he participated in the 1954 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed military coup that ousted democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz who was seen by the United States as a communist sympathizer.
That coup eventually ignited the brutal civil war, pitting a string of right-wing governments against leftist guerillas.
. . .
"If you are with us, we'll feed you, if not, we'll kill you," he famously told a crowd of indigenous Maya in July 1982.
. . .
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-guatemala-dictator-rios-montt-plagued-genocide-charges-025028278.html
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Efran Ros Montt was also the darling of US American fundie preachers
like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who wildly supported him, and sent money to him from their impoverished, ill-informed congregations.
His daughter, Zury Ríos Sosa, married US Republican Rep. Jerry Weller
Last Updated: Sunday, 21 November, 2004, 01:41 GMT
US son-in-law for ex-coup leader
A US congressman has married the daughter of Guatemala's ex-military ruler Efrain Rios Montt in the colonial capital, Antigua, amid tight security.
Some 300 guests attended the wedding of Jerry Weller, the Republican from Illinois, and Zury Rios Sosa, a member of Guatemala's Senate.
General Rios Montt is accused of ruling over some of the worst atrocities during Guatemala's 1982-83 civil war.
He was given special dispensation from house arrest to attend the wedding.
. . .
His opponents in the US say he has a potential conflict of interests, as he serves on a Congressional sub-committee for Western Hemisphere Affairs that sometimes oversees legislation concerning Guatemala.
More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4029499.stm
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Indigenous survivors attending the trial of Ríos Montt for genocide.
