When General Efrain Rios Montt decided to run for President of Guatemala in the 2003 election, who took a calculated risk. To pursue his controversial candidacy, he knew he would need to sacrifice his immunity from prosecution as a sitting deputy in the Guatemalan Congress. In March 2004, Rios Montt's new life without immunity from prosecution resulted in his nominal house arrest pending trial in connection with the death of a journalist in the run up to the 2003 elections. The charges in this case were quashed in January 2006.

However, the trial was a sideshow in the scheme of things for Rios Montt. For the last six years the public prosecution service (MP) have been dragging their feet in another case that involves Rios Montt's role in genocidal massacres in Guatemala while Minister of Defence, Chief of the Armed Forces and President during the early 1980's.In October 2006, the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) and the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) formally urged the public prosecution service (MP) to take the genocide case involving Rios Montt to the next stage in the legal process.

The timing of this demand went beyond coinciding with B'elejeb' Tz'i' (the Mayan Day of Justice, 5th October). If Rios Montt should be formally charged, he would not be able to register as a candidate in the 2007 elections. From 1st April 2007, Rios Montt will be able to formally present himself as a candidate to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and once he has formally registered as a candidate, he will again be immune from prosecution. The fear, shared by the AJR and CALDH, has been that public prosecutors will be leant on to run out the clock, allowing Rios Montt to present his candidacy and recover his immunity from prosecution. For this reason, both organisations have begun a campaign to focus minds in the MP and raise awareness of this critical time in the progression of the 'genocide cases'.

Then later in October this year events took a dramatic twist. It began with the Constitutional Court (CC) quashed an earlier ruling by the CC to allow Rios Montt to stand for the Presidency in 2003. Rios Montt was previously barred, in accordance with the Guatemalan constitution, from running for the Guatemalan Presidency for his participation in a coup d'etat in 1982. Rios Montt's legal team vowed to challenge this, but worse was to come for them.

On 26th October the European Parliament debated and passed a resolution on the legal proceedings against Rios Montt. Part of the motion urged: "the Guatemalan institutions fully to cooperate and do everything in their power to shed light on the human rights violations and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice and that the findings of the investigations are made public, as called for in the international arrest warrant issued by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional on 7 July 2006 against Jose Efraín Rios Montt, Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores, Angel Anibal Guevara Rodriguez, German Chupina Barahona, Pedro Garcia Arredondo and Benedicto Lucas Garcia, all of whom are accused of crimes of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention."

On 27th October, the Guatemalan Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) received the arrest warrant issued by the Spanish Audiencia Naciónal via the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry. On 31st October the CSJ sent it to a lower court (Tribunal Quinto de Sentencia). The stage was set for Rios Montt to face justice.

In a seemingly inexplicable yet momentous decision all the same, on 6th November the Guatemalan Court (Tribunal Quinto de Sentencia) ruled that although six of the accused by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional under judge Santiago Pedraz should be detained with a view to extraditing them, Rios Montt should not be. According to recent press reports, the reason that certain Guatemalan authorities are suggesting to explain Rios Montt's latest escape from justice, is down to some sort of clerical error on the part of the Spanish. Supposedly, goes the explanation, only the part of the arrest warrant on the fire in the Spanish Embassy in 1985 has been submitted and not that relating to the cases of genocide in 1981-3 that concerns Rios Montt.

While this latest episode has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, there is now a definite sense that the net seems to be slowly tightening around the intellectual authors of genocide in Guatemala. Whether Rios Montt will finally be netted is yet to be seen.

UPDATE: 15-11-2006

The inconsistent treatment of the accused still continues without being satisfactorily explained. Today's Prensa Libre ran an article explaining how not only has Rios Montt escaped any court order for his arrest in Guatemala, but now the order for the arrest of former President Mejia Victores has also been revoked.