Last week, Efrain Rios Montt, the former Guatemalan dictator who ruled the country during the most violent years of its civil war, was found guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison.
Guatemalan courts only recently began prosecutions for crimes committed during the civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. Rios Montt was convicted of overseeing the massacre of some 1,771 villagers of Guatemala’s Maya Ixil indigenous group during his 1982-1983 dictatorship.
And the conviction may yet be overturned. Reuters has reported that a judge who presided over earlier hearings said she could declare recent developments void.