YouTube coup in a dirty war

[Judi Lynn]

YouTube coup in a dirty war
February 3, 2010

Jonathan Franklin reports on the lawyer who organised his own execution.

For decades, military coups have been organised using private armies, overwhelming firepower and corrupt alliances. But a Guatemalan lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg, nearly toppled his nation's government using only his wild imagination, a post on YouTube and the virulence of viral videos.

Prosecutors in Guatemala began court hearings this week in a bizarre murder-suicide plot in which the prominent lawyer organised a team of professional assassins to execute the target: himself.

Rosenberg disguised his own suicide as a political murder in order to jump start what he hoped would be a political movement to rein in the corruption that permeates all levels of the Guatemalan Government.

The 47-year-old divorcee was shot as he went for a bicycle ride on May 10 last year in the trendy "Zona 1" district in Guatemala City.

Security cameras monitored him as he rode away, alone, on a two-lane, tree-lined street. The tapes show a tricked-out Mazda shadowing Rosenberg. It was over in seconds. The Mazda, captured again by security cameras, sped away as Rosenberg bled to death on the street. The Harvard-educated lawyer had been shot three times in the head.

Rosenberg's death was horribly typical of the bloodbath that earns Guatemala City its ranking as the third most deadly city in the world. An estimated 97 per cent of murders are never solved and a 2007 United Nations bluntly stated that "Guatemala is a good place to kill".

Immediately after his death, a video surfaced on newspaper websites and YouTube in which Rosenberg, sitting calm and looking straight into the camera, claimed his death was a political assassination involving top government officials.

Rosenberg hinted that he had secret documents outlining government corruption of the highest level. "If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Alvaro Colom," says Rosenberg in the video.

That message, seen by hundreds of thousands of people became a YouTube sensation, leading some to call his death "The YouTube Murder". It was chilling: the calm lawyerly voice. The prediction. The execution. As a cult classic, the Rosenberg video became YouTube's own snuff film.

Rosenberg's reputation as an orderly and prominent Harvard-educated lawyer gave credibility to his claims that his murder was organised by sinister forces. With corruption endemic in Guatemala, the charges were plausible.

For weeks massive street protests led by upper-crust residents called for the resignation of Colom, a Social Democrat who seeks higher taxes and greater social equality. Colom's presidency was in jeopardy as conspiracy theories flourished. Then on January 12 the case was resolved in a finding that few people could imagine.

"It was Rodrigo Rosenberg himself who requested the help of his ex-wife's cousins . . . to whom he said, 'I have an extortionist who is threatening me, and I want to kill him,' " said Carlos Castresana, the Spanish jurist who heads CICIG, a UN-backed team working to reinforce justice in Guatemala.

Referring to an eight-month detailed investigation in which three of the hitmen began to co-operate soon after their arrest in September, Castresana outlined how Rosenberg had bought two mobile phones to call in fake death threats from one phone and answer on the other. Rosenberg also began to organise the final details of his life, allegedly buying two grave sites, a beach home for his children and signing over control of his law firm to his son.

The murder of Rosenberg instantly became a rallying cry for conservative opponents of the progressive Colom Administration.

Frustration at widespread immunity for criminals boiled over into protests where tens of thousands of upper-class anti-Government protesters donned white shirts in a symbolic statement against dirty politics as they marched and clamoured for the President to resign.

Supporters of Colom, who came to power in 2007, immediately called the whole episode a sick plot by right-wing elements to quash the President's call for higher taxes on businesses and more equality for the Mayan majority.

Upper-class residents of Guatemala City used Facebook, Hi5 and Twitter to organise anti-Government rallies. Among the ruling elite, a consensus was boiling: the President had organised the hit.

Had George Bush been in power, Colom might well have been dumped, but in a quiet victory for Obama Administration diplomacy, a high-level delegation from the US-dominated Organisation of American States was sent to Guatemala to provide full US backing for the Colom Administration.

More:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/youtube-coup-in-a-dirty-war-20100201-n7y6.html