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<H1 class=article-title><FONT size=4>This is another sad and sorry example of
the weak and often irrelevant international justice system. Of the cases being
heard at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, all relate to crimes
that occurred on the African continent, none in Central America, despite their
being no dearth of potential.</FONT></H1>
<H1 class=article-title>Un-trialled in Guatemala</H1>
<DIV class=mainauthorstyle><FONT size=4><STRONG>by JAMES
ELLIOTT</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=main-text><FONT size=4><STRONG>The world was seeing something
incredible. Unprecedented to all, unimaginable to most, and unbearable for the
few in the dock: the brutal Efrain Rios Montt, president of Guatemala during its
most brutal and bloody massacres in 1982, was on trial for genocide; the first
former head of state ever to be tried by his own population for the
crime.<BR>The one thing this was not, was un-trialled. Not until last week
anyway. The implication that the current incumbent, President Peres Molina, was
also a key suspect in the purges of indigenous Mayans during Guatemala’s 36-year
long civil war that saw almost 200,000 killed or ‘disappeared’, meant the trial
was suspended.<BR>“I am not doing this because I want to, but because it has
been ordered by the constitutional court and the supreme
court,” </STRONG></FONT><A href=""><FONT size=4><STRONG>Judge Flores told
the hearing.</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG> Guatemala’s
Constitutional Court now has ten days to rule on the dispute, but the families
of Montt’s victims and human rights campaigners are now afraid that the moment
for justice has passed.<BR></STRONG></FONT><A href=""><FONT size=4><STRONG>Rios
Montt is accused of overseeing the deaths of 1,771</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT
size=4><STRONG> Mayan Indians during the military dictatorship he headed
from March 23, 1982, to Aug. 8, 1983, as part of a U.S.-backed “scorched earth”
campaign aimed at wiping out support for leftist guerrillas. As usual with the
principles of international justice, the well-established evidence against Montt
is now being disregarded because of the threat it poses to those in
power.<BR>Allan Nairn, an investigative journalist, </STRONG></FONT><A
href=""><FONT size=4><STRONG>told US media show Democracy
Now</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG> that he was due to give
evidence that would have directly implicated President Mollina, who Nairn has
also accused of perpetrating atrocities. In 1982, Nairn interviewed a Guatemalan
general named “Tito” on camera during the height of the massacres, a man who
turned out to be Mollina.<BR>With that news, the trial had to collapse. Like any
smart President, Mollina clearly knows how to avoid trouble, and whilst he
enjoys the same political immunity from court action that Montt used until 2012,
he can sense that a court case may be waiting when he leaves office. Not one to
sacrifice his own liberty for others’ justice, Mollina has pulled the plug on
the trial and many have lost hope that Montt would be found guilty and
sentenced.<BR>This is another sad and sorry example of the weak and often
irrelevant international justice system. Of the cases being heard at the
International Criminal Court in the Hague, all relate to crimes that occurred on
the African continent, none in Central America, despite their being no dearth of
potential. Rios Montt, and his protector-in-chief Mollina, will join the likes
of Suharto, Somoza and others to whom the rules of play do not
apply.<BR>Throughout the 1980s, financial and even military support for villains
of Montt’s ilk was forthcoming from the despicable presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Far from being the liberator of Russia and the man to bring down the Berlin wall
in the name of freedom and democracy, Reagan was a thug who outsourced his
killings to peasant villages in Central America.<BR>All part of the US’s grand
strategy of ‘containment’ in the face of that super-evil, Communism, Reagan
licensed all kinds of atrocities. </STRONG></FONT><A href=""><FONT
size=4><STRONG>In 1983, shortly after some 20,000 Salvadorans had been brutally
killed</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG> by government forces using
US weapons, Reagan went on television to praise the Salvadoran government he
armed for “making every effort to guarantee democracy, free labor unions,
freedom of religion, and a free press.”<BR>In addition, thousands of Nicaraguans
were killed by death squads that were armed with funds generated from selling
weapons to Khomeini’s Iran. Everyone has heard of this so-called ‘Iran-Contra’
affair but few seem willing to ask questions as to why Reagan lived the rest of
his life outside of prison for it, despite eleven administration officials going
down for their involvement. What makes Iran-Contra worse, is that Iran was armed
at the same time it was fighting Saddam Hussein, </STRONG></FONT><A
href=""><FONT size=4><STRONG>who was also being armed by the
US</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG>. The Iran-Iraq war raged on for
eight bloody years between 1980 and 1988, in which over a million people were
killed.<BR>This is all merely a taster of the atrocious rap sheet of one of the
most celebrated US Presidents of all time, and would doubtless include many more
US personnel if a full enquiry were to be had.<BR>At a time when Islam has
super-ceded Communism as the ultimate evil, and when Barack Obama has reminded
us that </STRONG></FONT><A href=""><FONT size=4><STRONG>‘Americans refuse
to be terrorised’</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG> in the wake of
the Boston bombing, the citizens of Guatemala, and the world, remember that
all-too-often Americans do <I>not</I> refuse to be the terrorists
themselves. Rios Montt’s trial was unprecedented, and indeed unimaginable, but
now it seems likely he will reside peacefully outside of the law. Along with a
working international justice system, Montt and Molina remain
un-trialled.<BR><EM>James Elliott can be reached at: <A
href="">jfg.elliott@live.co.uk</A></EM><BR></STRONG></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>