His short but fearsome regime, full of terrible massacres of indigenous people, become a symbol of the most violent era of Guatemala's 36 years of civil war (1960-1996).
A Guatemalan court ruled Tuesday that ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt must face retrial for genocide during the country's civil war despite his dementia. The trial will take place behind closed doors.
Guatemalan former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was supposed to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at a notorious public hospital to determine whether he's fit to stand trial for genocide. But his defense team succeeded in having him evaluated at an upscale private hospital instead.
A Guatemalan court on Thursday ordered former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt be admitted to a public hospital to undergo new psychiatric tests to determine whether he is intellectually fit to face trial for genocide.
Despite an official forensic report saying former dictator Efrían Ríos Montt is unfit to stand trial for genocide, Judge María Eugenia Castellanos told reporters Thursday that the aging former general would testify via videoconference from his home in Guatemala City, where he's under house arrest.
GUATEMALA CITY – Francisco Palomo Tejada, an attorney for former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, is the latest in a number of high-profile legal professionals to be killed in Guatemala, a country with one of the highest violent crime rates in the world.
Francisco Palomo was driving in his car when gunmen unloaded a hail of bullets, striking him at least 12 times, and killing him in broad daylight in a busy commercial area of Guatemala City, said firefighters spokesman Raúl Hernández.
Mr. Fer was sued Monday before Guatemala's special prosecutor's office on discrimination and racism after he posted a joke on Twitter about the genocide suffered by indigenous people here in the 1980s.
