GUATEMALA CITY, JUNE 8, 2001 (Zenit.org).- A court sentenced a priest and three military men to long prison terms for the 1998 murder of Guatemalan Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi.
The court gave the military men 30-year terms. It gave a 20-year sentence to Father Mario Orantes, whom it convicted as an accomplice in the murder of the 75-year-old human-rights defender.
The court acquitted a fifth defendant, Margarita López, the bishop´s cook. She had been charged with covering up the murder.
Based on the testimony of a homeless man, Rubén Chanax Sontáy, the Third Court of Sentencing decided that retired Colonel Byron Disrael Lima Estrada; his son, Captain Byron Lima Oliva; and former presidential bodyguard José Obdulio Villanueva were co-authors of the crime.
Lima Oliva also received a two-year term for public use of falsified documents.
Chanax testified that on April 26, 1998, he saw the military men at the scene of the crime, the garage of the parish house of St. Sebastian´s church, where the bishop resided, about 300 meters from the official headquarters of the government.
According to the judicial resolution, the reason for the crime was political. The auxiliary bishop was bludgeoned with a concrete block, 54 hours after blaming the army for most of the 55,000 cases of human rights violations during the 1960-1996 civil war.
The bishop´s denunciations were documented in the report on the Recovery of the Historical Memory, «Guatemala: Never Again.»
The trial included 42 hearings and the testimony of more than 120 witnesses. Defense lawyers said they would appeal, the Associated Press reported.
