Guatemalan authorities arrested 14 ex-military officials this week for crimes against humanity that transpired during the country's 36-year civil war. Among those arrested this week was Benedicto Lucas Garcia, 83, a former military commander and brother of the late president Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, who ruled the country as an oppressive regime from 1978 to 1982, according to the Associated Press.
The suspects are facing charges for massacres and the disappearances of people during the war. "The cases that we have documented were (attacks) against the non-combatant civilian population, including children," said Attorney General Thelma Aldana, who labelled the attacks as constituting one of "the largest forced disappearances in Latin America."
The Guatemalan government has only started investigating the crimes from its civil war period (1960-1996) in the past decade. Victim testimonies during the investigative process led to the discovery of over 500 skeletons in a secret graveyard located within a military zone, and officials were able to connect the mass graves to the suspects, state prosecutor Orlando Lopez explained, according to Reuters.
"If I killed, I killed in combat, leading my troops and not as a coward or anything like that," Benedicto Lucas, who has been credited with initiating Guatemala's paramilitary groups, told local media this week, AP reported.
Also among the detained were Byron Barrientos, minister of the interior from 2000 to 2004, and retired general Francisco Luis Gordillo, who facilitated the rise of former dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt to the presidency from 1982 to 1983, noted The Latin Correspondent.
Guatemala's civil war involved clashes among a series of right-wing presidencies and leftist groups, ultimately contributing to almost a quarter-million deaths. The military was responsible for over 80 percent of the human rights abuses that occurred during the era of conflict.
