Nine former soldiers and paramilitaries were arrested in northern Guatemala on Tuesday for their alleged involvement in the 1982 massacre of 25 members of the indigenous Mayan community during the civil war that bloodied the country from 1960 to 1996, the Prosecutor’s office spokesman Juan Luis Pantaleon. The nine men – former soldiers and former members of the Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PAC) created by the army – will be indicted for the massacre on June 29, 1982 of 25 indigenous people from the Mayan community of El Rancho Bejuco (northern Guatemala, said Juan Pantaleon.
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Five former Guatemalan paramilitaries were sentenced on January 24 to 30 years in prison each for raping indigenous women during the civil war. Guatemala’s civil war left 200,000 dead and missing, according to a Truth Commission that investigated atrocities committed during the conflict, mostly by the Armed Forces. The PACs were dissolved by the peace accords that ended the civil war in 1996.