Guatemalan retired officers on trial for sexual slavery

 
678Views 1Comments Posted 02/02/2016

TWO RETIRED  Guatemalan army officers are being tried on  charges of murder, forced disappearance, and forcing 11 indigenous women into sexual slavery during Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war that left 200,000 people dead or missing.

Most of the atrocities were committed by government forces according to the United Nations.

Francisco Reyes Girón, a 59-year-old retired colonel,  is  charged with “authorizing and consenting for soldiers under his command to exercise sexual violence and inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment against Maya-Q’eqchi’ women.”

His co-accused is Heriberto Valdéz, 74-year-old former soldier.

The two allegedly perpetrated the crimes  in 1982 and 1983 in Sepur Zarco,

Indigenous women with their faces and heads covered told the court what they had suffered as sexual slaves..

More than 40 percent of Guatemala’s population of 16 million is indigenous, and that group was the most affected by human rights violations committed at the time reports The Tico Times