Dos Erres

As we reported back in September, former kaibil Gilberto Jordan was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in Florida for lying on his naturalisation papers. He hid his role in the Dos Erres massacre to obtain US citizenship. Recently, another former kaibil, one its commanding officers at the time of Dos Erres, has been arrested in Canada on the same charge. Again, Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes is wanted as a participant in the Dos Erres massacre, but has been arrested on fraud charges. He is actually resident in California but was visiting Canada when he was arrested.

The US has recently stepped up efforts to track down war criminals who might be residing in its territory. The newly formed Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section of the Department of Justice Criminal Division has been collaborating with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in this task. He now faces extradition to the US, though interestingly, as he also has obtained Canadian citizenship and it is not clear wherther the Canadian legal system would take any action too. There have been calls for him to be tried in Canada for war crimes.

We were recently notified of this Kate Doyle article on the National Security Archive site.

History was made yesterday (September 17, 2010) when a U.S. District Court Judge in Southern Florida, William J. Zloch, sentenced former Guatemalan special forces soldier Gilberto Jordán to ten years in federal prison. Jordán was convicted of lying on his citizenship application to hide his role in the 1982 massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians in Dos Erres, Guatemala. In condemning Jordán to the maximum time allowed by law for naturalization fraud, Judge Zloch made clear that he intended the ruling to send a clear message that “those who commit egregious human rights violations abroad” cannot find “safe haven from prosecution” in the United States. The sentence marks the first time that any of the dozens of Kaibil special forces who carried out the murders almost 28 years ago has been prosecuted.

As we reported on 7 January the state of Guatemala was found to have so obstructed the progress of the case against those accused of the Dos Erres massacre that it constituted a denial of the right to justice. Following this verdict from the Interamerican Court of Human Rights the Guatemalan Supreme Court also spoke on 8 February. It has ordered that the case should continue its course through the courts, and that the arrest warrants for the 17 accused be followed up. On 12 February news came through of two arrests of former kaibiles who are accused.

After fifteen years of waiting for justice to be done in Guatemala the survivors and relatives of victims of the Dos Erres massacre have however received a favourable verdict elsewhere: the Interamerican Court of Human Rights found the state of Guatemala failed to live up to its judicial obligations to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the massacre.