Ex- Guatemalan police chief receives 70 year sentence for abduction

by admin
Aug 21, 2012
The former chief of Guatemala’s police force has been sentenced to 70 years in prison, for orchestrating the kidnap of a university student, during the country’s civil war.

Pedro Garcia, who was chief from 1974 until 1982, is now the highest ranking police official to have been convicted for war crimes in the latest string of cases against former government officials (see here, here and here).

Garcia was found guilty of crimes against humanity and the “forced disappearance” of engineering student Edgar Saenz in 1981.

He faces further murder charges over the 1980 burning of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala, where 36 people were killed.

See report from the Guardian here.

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button