GUATEMALA CITY, (Reuters) – A Guatemalan court ordered the government yesterday to apologize for atrocities committed against indigenous people in the country’s civil war after former dictator Efrain Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Judges sentenced Rios Montt to 80 years in prison on Friday after finding him responsible for deliberate killings by the armed forces of at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil population during his 1982-83 rule.
“Victims deserve fair restitution,” Judge Yasmin Barrios told a compensation hearing yesterday.
Without setting a deadline for when it should be done, Barrios said the heads of government, Congress and the judiciary, as well as the interior minister and minister of defense “must ask for forgiveness from the Maya Ixil population.”
Barrios did not order financial compensation, but said victims of the genocide should have access to a fund set up after the war to help survivors of the conflict.
President Otto Perez, the first military man to run the country since the end of the 1960-1996 war, maintained his view after the verdict that there had been no genocide in Guatemala. But he said he is willing to apologize for wartime atrocities.
“I have been willing to do it for many years,” Perez told reporters on Monday.
Perez commanded troops in some of the bloodiest regions of the war under Rios Montt and said that the genocide verdict is not yet “firm” since the appeals process has not been exhausted.
During the trial, one prosecution witness implicated Perez in atrocities, saying that troops under his command burned down homes and killed unarmed civilians during the conflict that killed up to 250,000 people.
