Guatemala

Abstract

Former Guatemalan leader Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty in May 2013 of genocide and crimes against humanity, the first time that any head of state has been convicted of genocide in a national court. The ruling was overturned on procedural grounds days later, however, and a new trial is scheduled for early 2015.The Attorney General's Office has also made progress on other prominent human rights cases, but impunity remains pervasive. In May, then-Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, recognized for her advances in reforming the country's prosecutorial system, was removed from office by the Constitutional Court seven months before her term was due to end.The mandate of the United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which since 2007 has supported efforts to investigate and prosecute organized crime, will end in September 2015. President Otto Pérez Molina has said that this will be the commission's final term.In a landmark ruling, former head of state Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty in May 2013 of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 80 years in prison. The retired general led a military regime from 1982 to 1983 that carried out hundreds of massacres of unarmed civilians. The ruling was overturned several days later by the Constitutional Court. A retrial is scheduled to commence in early 2015.In April 2014, the judge who initially convicted Ríos Montt of genocide was suspended and fined by an ethics tribunal for unprofessional conduct, an event described by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala as a serious assault on judicial independence. She has since been reinstated.