Guatemalan ex-ruler found guilty of genocide

Efrain Rios Montt sentenced to 80 years in prison over massacres of Ixil Maya Indians in the 1980s.

Efrain Rios Montt during his trial

A Guatemalan court has convicted former ruler Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 80 years in prison.

A three-judge tribunal on Friday issued the verdict after the nearly two-month trial in which dozens of victims testified about horrific atrocities.

Prosecutors said Rios Montt must have had knowledge of the massacres of Ixil Maya Indians when he ruled Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983 at the height of the country's 36-year civil war.

Rios Montt said he never knew of or ordered the massacres while in power.

"It was never my intention or my goal to destroy a whole ethnic group," he said during the trial.

"I never ordered attacks on a specific race. I never did it, and of everything they have said, there was no clear participation.''

The war between the government and leftist rebels cost more than 200,000 lives and ended in peace accords in 1996.

The 86-year-old former general is the first former Latin American leader ever found guilty of such a charge.

He can appeal the verdict.

In a court hearing, Benjamin Geronimo, president of the Justice and Reconciliation Association, said he survived massacres and killings that claimed the lives of 256 members of his community.

"I saw it with my own eyes, I'm not going to lie. Children, pregnant women and the elderly were killed,'' Geronimo, an Ixil Indian who spoke on behalf of the victims, said.

Prosecutors say that while in power, Rios Montt was aware of, and thus responsible for, the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayas in the towns of San Juan Cotzal, San Gaspar Chajul and Santa Maria Nebaj in Guatemala's western highlands.

Source: Agencies