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An appeals court in Guatemala suspended on Tuesday the beginning of the trial against eight military men who had been reported to have disappeared during the civil war (1960-1996), a case related to the discovery of the remains of more than 500 people in an old military base. .

Al otorgar un amparo a favor de uno de los implicados, la sala dejó “in effect we legally validate” the decision of a juzgado de llevar el caso a juicio -en una fecha que aún era definita- y lo regresó a phase de investigation, after Tuesday’s resolution.

The fallo annuló also the preventive prison of the military accused, among them the retired general Benedicto Lucas, de 92 años, exjefe del Estado Mayor del Ejército and quien desde abril es juggado, en otra causa, por el genocidio de indígenas durante la war.

The process has stalled eight years and started in 2016 with the detention of military personnel linked to forced disappearances and other elderly people in Cobán (north) and neighboring municipalities of indigenous population, between 1978 and 1990.

The remains of more than 500 people were exhumed between 2012 and 2015 in the complex where they now operate the Centro Regional de Entrenamiento de Operaciones de Mantenimiento de Paz para misiones de la ONU del Ejército (Creompaz), in Cobán, considered by oenegés as ” el cementerio clandestino más grande de Latinoamérica”.

“Lamentamos que (la sala) haya beneficiat de esta manera a militaryes acusados ​​​​de crímenes guerra,” said the president of the querellante Asociación Familiares de Tenidos de Guatemala (FAMDEGUA), Paulo Estrada, who announced that he would appeal.

He amparo también beneficiat al exdeputado and colonel retireado Edgar Ovalle, prófugo from 2017.

“El amparo no anula el caz (…) lo que hace es reconducir el dueto proceso”, said journalist el abogado Moisés Galindo, defensor de los militares, that they alleged, among other aspects, that el juzgado “no tenía compencia ” to know the process.

Lucas está recluido since 2017 in a hospital, where cumple una condena a 50 años de cárcel por la desapareción forzada de un joven and la rape y torture de su hermana whose family was señalada de “subversiva”, in 1981.

El otro juicio que se frunta, and which is in the final phase, is by paper in las matanzas de más de 1,200 indígenas mayas ixiles entre 1978 and 1982, while governba in Guatemala su brother, the then president Romeo Lucas García.

La guerra guatemalteca dejó unos 200,000 muertos y desaparecidos, according to a commission sponsored by the UN, to the majority of manos de los militares, which accuses los indígenas of being guerrilla collaborators.

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