By Lorena Seijo, Prensa Libre, March 18, 2007
(translation by P. Harris and E. Lawless)
Secret military document, in possession of the Attorney General, directly links Rìos Montt in Quichè massacres
Not one district attorney has had access, until now, to a classified Guatemalan Army document which tells of military operations executed during the internal armed conflict, against subversive cells or elements.
Delia Dàvila, head of the prosecutor’s department of human rights, within the Attorney General’s office, has been the first to receive a copy of one of those plans, protected by State secrecy and which was partially obtained in a clandestine manner by plaintiffs in the genocide case pursued within Guatemala.
Despite having in her possession documents which record the existence of the Sofìa Pan of operations, that, together with declarations of the witnesses, directly link the Army high command and their commander-in-chief, Efraìn Rìos Montt, with massacres committed predominantly within the Western region of the country, from 1982 to 1983, Dàvila has roundly refused to make an appointment with the former head of State and his leadership, to interrogate them.
The reason is, according to what the prosecutor (Dàvila) told the presiding judge in the case, Roberto Peñate, that she is not certain that those documents are authentic. To verify her doubts, the judge ordered that on January 31 the Minster of Defense, before an open court, present the original documents of Plan Sofia and Victory 82, due to their relation to each other, since the former derived from the latter.
In response, Ronaldo Cecilio Leiva, Minister of Defense, mailed a letter to the judge on February 8 in which he protests his disagreement with the judicial resolution, because “it violates article 30 of the constitution, which protects the confidentiality of military affairs.”
In the missive, Leiva affirms that Plan Victory 82 is a military affair of national security, classified as secret and that Plan Sofìa does not exist.
To avoid that the documents become public, he presented an appeal and claimed that these records, along with others that contain Operation Ixil Civil Affairs and Firmeza 83 plans, are off-limits.
The appeal was rejected by the judge who reminded the Minister of Defense that the accusation is not against him and summoned him for next March 26, so that he may show before the court the entirety of the plans and the original documents, to which Prensa Libre had partial access. Coincidentally, the meeting will be held 3 days after the 25th anniversary of the coup d’etat, in 1982, which brought Rìos Montt to power.
