Wednesday, 05.05.10

U.S. agents arrest Palm Beach man suspected in '82 Guatemala massacre

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@ElNuevoHerald.com

Federal agents have found three Guatemalan immigrants, including a South Florida resident, wanted on charges related to their alleged role in one of the worst massacres in the history of the Central American country.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents on Wednesday arrested one suspect in Palm Beach County, while two others in California may be picked up soon, according to sources familiar with the federal investigation.

The three suspects allegedly belonged to the military kaibil unit, which carried out a bloody massacre in 1982 that left 251 people dead, including women and children.

The case marks the latest effort in the United States of foreign war crimes or torture suspects by a key ICE unit dedicated to locating, detaining and deporting or prosecuting foreign nationals accused of human rights violations in their homelands. The unit, based in Washington, is known as the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit.

The three suspects may be prosecuted in U.S. federal courts for immigration violations but it's unclear if they would be tried for the torture allegations.

To date, more than 180 human rights-related arrests have been made since ICE took over the program in 2003 from the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service or INS. More than 300 known or suspected human rights violators have also been deported, including many who were already in removal proceedings started by INS.

The latest case involves Gilberto Jordán of Delray Beach, Jorge Vinicio Sosa-Orantes of Riverside, Calif., and Pedro Pimentel-Rios of Santa Ana, Calif.

Jordán, Vinicio-Sosa and Pimentel-Rios were among 17 former kaibiles implicated in the massacre. Jordán was picked up Wednesday.

``I can confirm that ICE special agents arrested him earlier [Wednesday],'' said Nicole Navas, an ICE spokeswoman in Miami.

According to records of the massacre investigation, 58 kaibiles were airlifted into the area on Dec. 4, 1982.

Two days later, at 2:30 a.m., some of the soldiers allegedly dressed to resemble guerrilla fighters entered Dos Erres and began waking up the inhabitants as they went door to door.

The massacre was investigated by Guatemalan and foreign experts and in 2000 then-President Alfonso Portillo acknowledged the government's role and promised to compensate families of the victims.

But last year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights accused Guatemala of reneging on payments and alleged government authorities had failed to properly investigate the massacre and punish the soldiers responsible for it.

Investigators from the human rights court, an arm of the Organization of American States, and various human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have interviewed survivors to establish the facts of the terrible events almost 30 years ago.

Some of the most graphic details are contained in a 2008 document prepared for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Evidence includes testimony by several survivors and former kaibil soldiers who were involved in the massacre.

One of the former soldiers, quoted in a human rights court document, described how he saw his former fellow soldiers kill villagers at Dos Erres or Two Rs, named after the two founders whose last names began with the letter R: Federico Ruano and Marcos Reyes.

``After the meeting held by the officers and in which it was decided to kill all the inhabitants of the hamlet, at about 2 p.m. the executions began,'' Favio Pinzón, an ex-kaibil, told investigators in Guatemala City in 1996. ``It began with a child 3 or 4 months old, he was thrown alive into the well, and so it continued with all the children. The adults were still enclosed in the evangelical church, people who could be heard were praying that nothing happen to them and all recommended themselves to God.''

The killing went on for hours, according to witnesses interviewed by investigators.

Amnesty International interviewed a witness in hiding in 1997 and obtained a copy of another's pretrial statement.

Both stated that an army intelligence commander at a military base nearby had ordered the massacre.

According to the Amnesty report: ``Among the women there were girls of 12 and 13 years old, which some soldiers started to rape.

``They brought people to the edge of the well and hit them with clubs. Then they threw them in the well. After the women, they killed the men and then the older men, throwing them all down the well.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/05/1 ... h-man.html