Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA

Plan to Assassinate Bishop, Politicians, and Journalist Revealed

March 18, 2005

Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann recently revealed the existence of a plan to extrajudicially execute four people who play key roles in Guatemalan public affairs:

1) Nineth Montenegro, former director of the Mutual Support Group (GAM) and currently a congresswoman with the New Nation Alliance. She has dedicated herself to ensuring the auditing of several military institutions in which corruption and misuse of funds have been uncovered. Several military officers have been accused of stealing hundreds of millions of quetzales.

2) Monsignor Alvaro Ramazzini, Bishop of San Marcos, who has publicly expressed concern about the dangers of mining and has also accompanied campesinos in their struggles for land.

3) Gonzalo Marroquin, a well-known journalist and businessman who is president of the Inter-American Press Society and director of the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre.

4) Otto Pérez Molina, retired army general and current congressman and secretary general of the Patriot Party.

P érez Molina told the Guatemalan press that he had been alerted last week to the plan, which is laid out in a twelve-page document that contains information on the routines of each person and other data gained through surveillance.

Agence France Press obtained a copy of the anonymous document, which is now in the hands of the Presidential Human Rights Commission. The document explains that P érez should be eliminated so that the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman can enter Guatemala and conduct his operations from there. The document notes that it was P érez who captured “El Chapo” during the government of former president Ramiro de Leon Carpio and personally handed him in to the Mexican authorities.

According to Guatemalan press reports, supposed drug traffickers were behind the plan to assassinate all four leaders, but their motives were not clear.

GAM, however, in a statement said the following: “It is evident that a threat of this sort comes from the clandestine structures that never were dissolved and that now are at the service of powerful sectors. These structures are made up of those who violated human rights in the recent past and today seek the manner to enrich themselves and prevent the investigation of their crimes.”

GAM also stated that the minister of the interior, as the official in charge of guaranteeing citizens’ segurity, should not have publicly revealed this sort of threat. GAM noted that the announcement of the death list provokes more vulnerability and fear in Guatemalan society because it is evident that the security forces do not have the capacity to combat crime. GAM asked the minister to do the following, instead of making statements with no positive results: dismantle and prevent any assassination plan that may be underway; arrest the intellectual and material authors; and punish them in an exemplary manner. GAM asked the government, especially the minister of the interior, to guarantee the security of the four people threatened with death and to solve the case as quickly as possible.

 

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