Former Guatemalan President José Efraín Ríos Montt and former Intelligence Director José Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, who together controlled the country between 1982 and 1983, are currently facing genocide charges in a trial many thought would never come.

“It is the first time that a former head of state is being tried for genocide in a credible national court, by the national authorities, in the country where the alleged crimes took place,” says Marcie Mersky of the International Center for Transitional Justice in an opinion piece for Al Jazeera. “Getting this case to court has been no easy feat in Guatemala, where decades of armed conflict and strict military control of the government left behind an enfeebled and politically compromised judicial system, as well as a deeply entrenched expectation of impunity for even the most heinous of crimes.”

A a member of Congress until 2012, Montt evaded prosecution because of a Guatemalan law that grants immunity to elected legislators. In January, when a judge found sufficient evidence linking Montt and Sanchez to the killing of at least 1,700 indigenous people in a counter-insurgency plan executed under their command, they were called to trial. For the next several weeks, three judges will hear testimony about the Dirty War, in which the state slaughtered 200,000 people of the Maya-Ixil and three other ethnic groups over three decades, according to a 1999 UN truth commission report.

Prior to the trial, Guatemala’s current president, Otto Perez Molina—formerly a general under Montt—declared that there had been no genocide in Guatemela. Since the trial began on March 19, pro-military supporters of Montt have gathered outside the courtroom each day to chant “There was no genocide here” while playing military march music and the Guatemalan national anthem.
With hundreds more testimonies to be heard and multiple experts to be called, a verdict could be months away.

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