Banking on Violence?
By Barbara Rose Johnston
On July 7, 2006, Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued an international arrest order for two former Guatemalan military dictators, Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, along with five others accused of genocide and other crimes against humanity during Guatemala's civil war.
His action follows an aborted effort to depose Rios Montt and others in Guatemala the previous week, and signals Spanish intent to proceed with the case filed by Guatemalan Nobel Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú, whose father and 38 other people were killed during a government siege on the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City in 1980. The warrant cites an array of actions and events including the Río Negro massacre, orders a freeze upon the financial assets of the accused, and has been lodged with Interpol and Europol making the warrants and financial freeze of assets effective throughout the world. Amazingly, this news of a renewed effort to prosecute parties responsible for genocide in Guatemala received scant mention in the Washington Post and no mention in the New York Times.
The lack of interest in reporting the news that a Spanish court had issued warrants for the arrest of three former Guatemalan heads of state who are charged with genocide is perhaps explained by the long historical friendship between the accused and the United States, as well as the fact that Guatemala is a very busy place these days.
