Former Dictator Jailed for Genocide

[georgephillip]

For the first time in recorded history, a politician has been held accountable for crimes he ordered on behalf of his oligarch overlords.

"Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt was found guilty on Friday of genocide and crimes against humanity during the bloodiest phase of the country's 36-year civil war and was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

"Hundreds of people who were packed into the courtroom burst into applause, chanting, 'Justice!' as Rios Montt received a 50-year term for the genocide charge and an additional 30 years for crimes against humanity.

"It was the first time a former head of state had been found guilty of genocide in his or her own country.

Google CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954 if interested.

Former Guatemala dictator Rios Montt convicted of genocide | Reuters

 

[georgephillip]

"He attended the School of the Americas in 1951.[12] In 1954, the young officer played a minor role in the successful CIA-organized coup against President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.

"Following the coup, Ríos Montt rose swiftly through the military. In 1970, under the military regime of President General Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio, he became a brigadier general and chief of staff for the Guatemalan army.[13]"

Efraín Ríos Montt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[ScienceRocks]

Good. I hope they execute him.

 

[georgephillip]

Good. I hope they execute him.

I hope he becomes a global role model, as well.

 

[georgephillip]

"Colonel George Maynes, the US military attache in Guatemala, told me
that he and Benedicto Lucas had developed this sweep tactic and that
Rios Montt had expanded it.

"A US Green Beret, Captain Jesse Garcia showed me how, under Rios
Montt, he was training Guatemalan troops in the techniques of how to
“destroy towns.” (Allan Nairn, “Despite Ban, U.S. Captain Trains
Guatemalan Military,” Washington Post, October 21, 1982, page 1).

"The Guatemalan Catholic Bishops Conference reported in a May 27, 1982
pastoral letter: 'Numerous families have perished, vilely murdered.
Not even the lives of the elderly, pregnant women or innocent children
have been respected … Never in our history has it come to such grave
extremes. These assassinations fall into the category of genocide.'”

Allan Nairn on Rios Montt | Norman G. Finkelstein