A court in Guatemala sentenced three years in prison to three exparamilitaries for crimes against humanity, after checking their responsibility in sexual violations against six women in indigenous villages of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, during the 1980s, within the framework of the internal armed conflict. The case was called Achí women.
Dozens of international non -governmental organizations that accompanied the process, including Wola and Impunity Watch, stressed that the case illustrates how the Guatemalan army used sexual violence as a weapon of war to control and submit indigenous communities between 1960 and 1996.
The three exparamilitaries, also indigenous, integrated the civil self -defense patrols, created by the Armed Forces to combat the leftist guerrillas during the war, which left 200,000 dead and missing, according to the Commission for the Historical Clarification of the UN.
The defendants were found as authors responsible for crimes against humanity for sexual violations against Mayan women of the Achí ethnicity, according to the sentence read by the Secretary of the Court, in charge of Judge María Eugenia Castellanos.
Those sentenced to 40 years in prison are unmutable are Pedro Sánchez, Simeón Enriquez and Félix Tum, between 60 and 73 years, declared guilty for the events between 1981 and 1983, a source of Impunity Watch informed AFP.
“I am innocent of what they are accusing me,” said Sanchez this Friday before the court before the sentence.
“I recognized them well – the defendants – here not only tells what they say, but what I happened. I suffered in my own flesh everything they did to me,” said Pedrina Ixpatá, 61, one of the victims last week.
The trial began on January 28 and constitutes the second process for violations against women Achí in the villages of the municipality of Rabinal and in a military base in that town, located about 50 km north of the capital.
Between 2011 and 2015, a group of 36 victims filed complaints against retired military and army collaborators. In 2022, five other exparamilitaries were sentenced to 30 years in prison for similar events.
Prior to the sentence, the victims, accompanied by activists, held a ceremony with flowers and candles in the square of the courts of the capital.
In 2013, a court sentenced to the former president Efraín Ríos Montt for the genocide of indigenous Ixiles during his de facto regime between 1982 and 1983. Justice subsequently annulled the sentence and ordered a new trial, but the general died in 2018, at 91.
#Casomujeresachi Pedro Sánchez Cortes, Simeón Enrique Gómez and Félix Tum Ramírez sentenced to 40 years in prison unbalanceable for crimes against duties of humanity.@Guatevision_tv @prensa_libre
📷 Daniel Samayoa pic.twitter.com/cfydmyde3t
– Elmer Vargas (@Evargas_GTV) May 30, 2025