Spanish judge to question former dictator

31 May 2006

MADRID — A Spanish judge is to question a former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt about an attack on a Spanish embassy in which 37 people died.

Judge Santiago Pedraz will travel to Guatemala City to question Montt on 28 June.

Rios Montt and the other defendants in the case will testify about the attack, which happened in January 1980.

It led to the deaths of, among others, three Spanish priests Faustino Villanueva, Jose Maria Gran Cirera and Carlos Perez Alonso.

Another person who died Vicente Menchu, the father of indigenous 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu.

The lawyers for Rios Montt, an army general and coup leader who ruled Guatemala from 1982-83, claimed the Spanish judge does not have jurisdiction to act in connection with the genocide, state terrorism and torture charges brought before Spain’s National Court in 1999.

The case is being brought by Menchu in the Spanish court, which requested the Guatemalan judicial proceedings.

The Guatemalan supreme court turned down Montt’s claims on the grounds of inadmissibility.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news