Legal professionals for the six victims say ‘historic’ court docket resolution recognises the plight of survivors who demanded justice for many years.
A prime Guatemalan court docket has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years every in jail after they have been discovered responsible of raping six Indigenous girls between 1981 and 1983, one of many bloodiest intervals of the Central American nation’s civil conflict.
The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark one other vital step in direction of attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous girls, who have been sexually abused by pro-government armed teams, throughout a interval of maximum bloodshed between the army and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 useless or lacking.
Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum have been discovered responsible of crimes in opposition to humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Decide Maria Eugenia Castellanos stated.
“The ladies recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the locations the place the occasions befell. They have been victims of crimes in opposition to humanity,” she stated, praising the ladies’s bravery in coming to court docket to testify on repeated events.
“They’re crimes of solitude that stigmatise the girl. It’s not simple to talk of them,” the choose stated.
Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the ladies, stated the sentence was “historic” as a result of it lastly recognised the battle of civil conflict survivors who had demanded justice for many years.
A number of Maya Achi girls within the courtroom applauded on the finish of the trial, the place some wearing conventional apparel and others listened to the decision by an interpreter.
One of many victims, a 62-year-old girl, advised the AFP information company she was “very pleased” with the decision.
Pedro Sanchez, one of many three males convicted, advised the court docket earlier than the sentencing, “I’m harmless of what they’re accusing me of.”
However Decide Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, one other member of the all-women, three-panel court docket, stated there was little question concerning the girls’s testimony in opposition to the suspects.
The convictions have been second within the Maya Achi girls’s case in opposition to former army personnel and paramilitaries. The primary trial, which befell in January 2022, noticed 5 former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in jail.
Advocacy group Impunity Watch stated the case “highlights how the Guatemalan military used sexual violence as a weapon of conflict in opposition to Indigenous girls” through the civil battle.
In 2016, a Guatemalan court docket sentenced two former army officers for holding 15 girls from the Q’eqchi group, who’re additionally of Maya origin, as intercourse slaves. Each officers have been sentenced to a mixed 360 years in jail.