wfn.org | Witness May Have Solved Mystery of Guatemalan Bishop's Murder

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

31-August-1999 
99287 
 
    Key Witness May Have Solved Mystery 
    of Guatemalan Bishop's Murder 
 
    by Paul Jeffrey 
    Ecumenical News Service 
 
GUATEMALA CITY- The mystery over the murder of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan 
Gerardi 16 months ago may soon be resolved, following the submission of 
evidence by a former Guatemalan military intelligence official who has 
testified that his colleagues in the elite Presidential Guard were 
responsible for the death. 
 
    Government prosecutors have also received the results of the DNA 
analysis of blood found at the murder scene which reportedly provide 
important new evidence. 
 
    The two developments are offering renewed hope that, after more than a 
year of confusion, Guatemalans may be close to finding out who murdered the 
popular bishop. 
 
    Bishop Juan Gerardi was killed late on April 26, 1998, just two days 
after releasing a lengthy report blaming the country's military for most of 
the deaths and "disappearances" - abductions - during three decades of 
civil war. 
 
    Within hours of the brutal killing, rumors began to circulate, some 
linking the military to the death, others blaming an allegedly homosexual 
priest, still others claiming the prelate was killed to keep him from 
blowing the whistle on a church-linked gang of thieves stealing icons from 
Catholic churches and selling them on the black market. 
 
    At first prosecutors detained a homeless man who sometimes slept in the 
park in front of the bishop's parish house where the killing took place. He 
was later released. Then Mario Orantes, a priest who shared the house with 
Bishop Gerardi, was arrested and held for almost seven months. 
 
    Orantes was released in February after prosecutors failed to establish 
a case against him, though a judge warned him that he was still under 
investigation. 
 
    Since then, many Guatemalans have assumed that the case, like many 
high-profile murders here, would never be solved. 
 
    But then a surprise witness came forward, Jorge Aguilar, an official of 
the Presidential Guard, the military squadron responsible for protecting 
the country's president. Bishop Gerardi's report had linked the 
Presidential Guard to cases of torture and murder. 
 
    Aguilar said that on the night of the murder he was on duty at the 
Presidential Guard headquarters, three blocks from the murder scene. 
 
    Officials from the Human Rights Office of the Catholic Archdiocese of 
Guatemala have known about Aguilar for more than a year. But he had 
reportedly been threatened by his supervisors to keep quiet, and he was 
unwilling to come forward to testify. 
 
    On August 21, he changed his mind. On August 24, he spent eight hours 
with Flor de Maria Garcia, the judge handling the Gerardi case.  Aguilar's 
testimony took place in a private hearing in the archdiocesan human rights 
office. 
 
    Aguilar described events at the Guard's headquarters on the night of 
the killing, telling the judge that the murder had been planned by Major 
Francisco Escobar, Captain Byron Lima, and another officer identified only 
as "Dubois." Aguilar said that Presidential Guard specialists "cleaned" the 
zone around the church before the murder, ensuring that no police units or 
other unwelcome outsiders would interrupt their activities. 
 
    Aguilar said the killer, whose name was not made public, left the 
Presidential Guard headquarters in a car with Captain Lima and others whose 
heads were covered by ski masks. Aguilar said the killer was later 
dismissed from the Presidential Guard, but had recently been rehired as a 
martial arts instructor. 
 
    A white Toyota Corolla, with licence plates assigned to the 
Presidential Guard, was seen at the scene of the killing by a taxi driver 
and is now hidden at the guard headquarters, according to Aguilar. 
 
    On August 26, - two days after he gave his testimony - Aguilar, his 
wife and their five children were escorted by United Nations officials to 
the airport and left the country to live at an undisclosed location in 
Canada. 
 
    Military officials quickly tried to discredit Aguilar. Colonel Douglas 
Barrera, a military public relations official, claimed he "was a simple 
janitor in the National Palace, who for administrative reasons was on the 
payroll of the Presidential Guard." 
 
    Mynor Melgar, a lawyer for the archdiocese, said the military was 
protesting too much. "We want them to stop their defensive attitude and 
stop disqualifying the testimony of persons without even knowing what they 
said before the judge," Melgar said. 
 
    From the start of the investigations, archdiocesan officials suggested 
that Bishop Gerardi's murder was politically motivated and that members of 
the military, including Captain Lima, were involved. 
 
    But the first government investigator, Otto Ardon, refused to pursue 
the theory. Ardon resigned in December and the new investigator assigned to 
the case, Celvin Galindo, complained that much of the evidence gathered in 
the investigation was missing. On August 23, Galindo's office revealed that 
the original transcripts of interviews with 20 military officials possibly 
linked to the crime were now missing. (While copies exist, they are not 
admissible as evidence in court.) 
 
    Galindo returned from the US on August 27 with the results of DNA tests 
performed by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The tests 
compared blood samples recovered from the murder scene with samples taken 
in May from 17 possible suspects, including 12 military officials and 
Father Orantes. Galindo refused to reveal the results of the blood tests, 
but suggested that the new evidence might allow him to clear up the case 
within two weeks. "We have definitely not stopped investigating other 
theories," Galindo told reporters, "but with these reports that I brought 
back from the US, we have arrived at some conclusions which support a 
political thesis [for the killing]." 
 
    According to a church official who has seen the results of the DNA 
tests, the case will remain complicated. In addition to evidence that at 
least one military official was present at the murder scene, the analysis 
shows that "Orantes' blood is all over the place," according to the 
official, who requested anonymity. This has prompted new speculation that 
Orantes either willingly participated in the assault or was forced to do so 
by the attackers. Orantes has repeatedly denied any involvement in the 
killing, yet his story has been fraught with contradictions since the 
beginning. 
 
    Several external factors are apparently increasing pressure for the 
case to be wound up. General elections are a little over two months away, 
and Oscar Berger, the presidential candidate for the ruling National 
Advancement Party, is running second in the campaign. A resolution of the 
Gerardi case would allow Berger to defend his party from accusations it has 
done little to improve Guatemala's scandalous justice system. 
 
    The FBI had originally said the DNA results would not be available 
until January. Its speed in providing the results may indicate US fear of a 
victory by presidential candidate Alfonso Portillo of the Guatemalan 
Republican Front, the party founded by brutal former dictator Efrain Rios 
Montt. 
 
    Resolving the case soon could also help the government to clean up an 
image tarnished by the recent visit of a United Nations-sponsored observer 
of the justice system. On August 28, at the end of a 13-day official visit, 
special UN rapporteur Param Cumaraswamy, said Guatemala's justice system 
was riddled with "inefficiency, incompetence, corruption, influence buying 
and cronyism." 
 
    He said his conclusions were preliminary, but he pointed out that, 
according to government statistics, "only ten per cent of cases of violent 
homicide were taken to the courts, which means that there was 90 per cent 
immunity in the country." 
 
    Cumaraswamy said he had told Defence Minister Marco Tulio Espinosa 
"that the army has been implicated in various assassinations, and that they 
should make sure that those who carried out these crimes appear before the 
justice system." 

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