More Evidence of Guatemala’s Corruption and Ties to Adoption

Our first point in our Finding Fernanda book review back in November 2011 was “In Guatemala, the Mafia Is Involved with International Adoption and All of the Depraved, Heinous Actions Described in This Book.”

Gen. Efrain Rios Montt is finally being tried for genocide in Guatemala. His lawyer is none other than adoption lawyer Francisco García Gudiel. Gudiel who was involved in many Guatemalan adoptions to the US.

Trial of Guatemala’s former US-backed strongman opens with call for justice for victims [Washington Post 3/19/13 by Associated Press] says “Nicolas Brito was the first of at least 150 witnesses expected to give their testimony in the trial of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, the first Latin American strongman to be tried on genocide charges in his own country.

Brito, an indigenous Ixil who survived the army’s attack on the village of Canaque in the town of Santa Maria Nebaja, says he escaped and watched as soldiers attacked his village.

“A lot of women died because they were preparing the dough (for tortillas) when soldiers arrived and they couldn’t run,” Brito said in Ixil through an interpreter. “The soldiers tore the victims’ hearts out and put them on a little table, they piled them there.”

He described soldiers knocking down a house and setting it on fire.

Rios Montt seized power in a March 23, 1982, coup, and ruled until he himself was overthrown just over a year later. Prosecutors say that while in power he was aware of, and thus responsible for, the slaughter by subordinates of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayas in San Juan Cotzal, San Gaspar Chajul and Santa Maria Nebaj, towns in the Quiche department of Guatemala’s western highlands.

Those military offensives were part of a brutal, decades-long counterinsurgency against a leftist uprising that brought massacres in the Mayan heartland where the guerrillas were based.”

““No one ever heard a speech in which he said, ‘Kill the Ixils, exterminate the Ixils.’ Jose Efrain Rios Montt never gave a written or verbal order to exterminate the Ixils in this country,” defense attorney Francisco Garcia Gudiel told the court.

The trial was disrupted when Rios Montt’s lawyer was expelled for accusing one of the judges of being hostile to him.

Gudiel was ordered out of the courtroom after saying Judge Jazmin Barrios was biased against him because they had clashed in previous trials. The three-judge panel rejected his argument and ordered him out of the courtroom. They tried to get the lawyer for one of Rios Montt’s co-defendants to represent the former strongman. After a brief and loud argument from that lawyer, the panel finally assigned a third defense lawyer to represent Rios Montt.”

Author Erin Siegal of Finding Fernanda evens mentions Gudiel as #5 on her list of lawyers she wanted to see information about: See here

PoundPup Legacy has a file on him with one 2006 article and two 2008 articles. See here. In a 2008 article, he is listed as #5 in children placed:

“5. Francisco García Gudiel 221 cases admitted

His work has been questioned in the legal field for some controversial cases ever known, among them defending  Elvia Domitila Morales, Vilma Orellana Ruano and Juan Carlos Rios Ramírez (Rios Montt’s grandson) accused of assaulting Rigoberta Menchú, the Constitutional Court (CC) on November 9, 2003.

Besides leading the defense of the 150 cases processed by the “Black Thursday”, which also involved supporters and political figures of the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG).

He also led the defense of the former mayor of Mixco, Elmer Morales, a fugitive from justice since the process was followed by corruption to the ownership of Q425 mil for infrastructure work in the installation of public telephones in Mixco.

According to a release of this morning of March 30, 2004, Garcia Gudiel defended alleged Colombian drug traffickers, Carlos Rodríguez Monar and José Arrizabaleta caught in a search conducted in a residential area of 14, owned by Otto Herrera ( Colombia extradited to the United States for drug trafficking).”

 

 

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