{"id":218802,"date":"2016-01-25T16:55:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T16:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=218802"},"modified":"2016-01-25T16:55:06","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T16:55:06","slug":"three-decades-dirty-war-us-trained-military-officials-face-prosecution-atrocities-guatemala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/three-decades-dirty-war-us-trained-military-officials-face-prosecution-atrocities-guatemala\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Decades After Dirty War, US-Trained Military Officials Face Prosecution for Atrocities in Guatemala"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"max-width: 640px; display: inherit;\"><span style=\"max-width: 640px; text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">A young girl in San Cristobal Verapaz, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala passes in front of a mural depicting a soldier from Military Zone 21, and the military&#8217;s scorched earth policy in Alta Verapaz. (Photo: Jeff Abbott)<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Twelve graduates of the US Army&#8217;s &#8220;School of the Americas&#8221; are finally facing prosecution for atrocities documented in Guatemala three decades ago.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of people in rural Guatemala were disappeared by US-trained soldiers who between 1981 and 1988 carried out a campaign of forced disappearances as part of the Guatemalan government&#8217;s deadly campaign against alleged communist insurgents. The campaign eventually broadened into a dirty war against leftists, students, labor unionists and guerrillas, and led to the military&#8217;s genocide against indigenous communities.<\/p>\n<p>On January 6, 2016, the Guatemala Public Ministry moved to arrest 18 top military officials from the era of the war, 12 of whom are graduates of the School of the Americas, the military training academy in Fort Benning, Georgia, that is now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Then, on January 18, a Guatemalan court declared that the case against the aging military officers, who include commanders, intelligence officers and a major general, for the campaign of forced disappearances could advance.<\/p>\n<p>The beginning of the legal process against the former military officials breaks 30 years of impunity, and begins to bring justice for the families of the disappeared. But an important question remains: When will the US government be held accountable for its role in the construction of Guatemala&#8217;s counterinsurgency &#8211; which left over 200,000 dead, 45,000 missing and a broken Guatemalan society more than 30 years after the war began?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/34541-three-decades-after-dirty-war-us-trained-military-officials-face-prosecution-for-atrocities-in-guatemala\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A young girl in San Cristobal Verapaz, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala passes in front of a mural depicting a soldier from Military Zone 21, and the military&#8217;s scorched earth policy in Alta Verapaz. (Photo: Jeff Abbott) Twelve graduates of the US Army&#8217;s &#8220;School of the Americas&#8221; are finally facing prosecution for atrocities documented in Guatemala three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":218803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-218802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}