On December 10, ex-military commissioner and ex-mayor of El Chol, Nicolás Orrego Orrego, faced indictment for his role in crimes against humanity during the Rancho Bejuco massacre. The court date was set for nearly two years after Orrego’s co-defendants were arrested and more than 42 years after the 1982 massacre itself, in which the army and civil defense patrolmen murdered at least 25 people, 88% of whom were women and children.
BTS was present at the Torre de Tribunales to accompany Jesús Tecú Osorio from the Rabinal Community Legal Clinic at this second judicial process for the Rancho Bejuco case. Orrego was not arrested and did not face trial with the nine others who were prosecuted in June 2023, supposedly due to a hospitalization. After Orrego eluded the previous trial, his lawyer presented a document earlier this year saying he was ready to turn himself in. The courts then set December 10 as a hearing date to formally charge him.
However, when the Public Prosecutor’s attorneys and the attorney for the plaintiff arrived on Tuesday morning, no one was to be found in the courtroom. They soon learned that the defense lawyer had reported that he was sick the day prior, causing the court to reschedule the indictment for February 2025. Despite receiving the lawyer’s notice that he was ill, the court failed to inform plaintiffs, meaning that Rabinal Community Legal Clinic staff traveled from Rabinal that same morning. Furthermore, the court is meant to require that a state forensic expert certifies a party’s illness if they fail to appear in court, but in this case, the judge just merely accepted the lawyer’s excuses and rescheduled the hearing. Tecú noted that Orrego still could have appeared or could have been arrested and brought to court, given that he has had an arrest warrant out against since the beginning of 2022. Defense efforts to delay trials and court rulings that foment illegality are part of a larger strategy to wear survivor organizations down, preventing them from seeking a modicum of justice and redress through the court system.

Genocide survivors speak out against judicial system attacks on their work for justice.
While we waited outside the courtroom, genocide survivors from the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (the joint plaintiff in the genocide cases against Ríos Montt and Lucas García) and the Platform for Organizations of Internal Armed Conflict Victims held a press conference in front of the courthouse. They denounced a recent decision to recuse the judges hearing the genocide case against Benedicto Lucas García. The decision to recuse the judges and send the trial back to be heard anew came after seven months of trial dates, as the parties were presenting their final arguments and after the court had held 99 hearings, during which more than 120 witnesses testified. With another guilty verdict against Lucas García in the offing, the court system took action to set the case back to the beginning, while the Public Prosecutor’s office simultaneously dismantled the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights, firing or moving 14 different special prosecutors, including Erick de León, the lead prosecutor in the Lucas García genocide case.
The “justice” system has carried out many such strategies in the last several years, in efforts to subvert justice and take apart other emblematic cases for justice, including the CREOMPAZ (Military Zone 21) and Military Diary (Death Squad Dossier) cases.
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