the trial once morest the Guatemalan drug trafficker Marvin Montiel, alias el Taquero, for the 2016 massacre of 12 inmates inside a prison, including one of the murderers of Bishop Juan Gerardi, and an Argentine woman, was rescheduled for April 2024.
The Court of Greater Risk A of the Guatemalan Judicial Organism had contemplated starting this Tuesday, August 16, the beginning of the oral and public debate once morest Montiel, but due to the absence of one of his magistrates and due to the excess of cases in his court, he scheduled it once more for April 2024.
Montiel, known by the alias “El Taquero”, is facing legal proceedings once morest him for the massacre, as is his wife, Sara Cruz Mancilla, and 12 other defendants.
The massacre took place on April 18, 2016 inside the Pavón prison, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, and was targeting retired Army Captain Byron Lima Oliva, convicted of the murder of the priest Juan Gerardi in 1998.
According to investigations carried out by the Public Ministry (MP), an armed commando of Montiel’s structure was organized to reach the place where Lima was in prison and perpetrated the massacre.
The retired military man, 11 more inmates and Joanna Birriel, an Argentine model who visited him in prison, They died in the attack.
The incident allegedly occurred due to the rivalry between the two prisoners with the aim of gaining control of the prison, according to the MP’s investigations that will be used in the trial.
Lima Oliva was serving a sentence in Pavón of 20 years in prison since 2001 having been found guilty as co-author of the murder of the auxiliary bishop of Guatemala, Juan José Gerardi.
The priest was beaten to death on April 26, 1998, regarding 54 hours following presenting the archdiocesan report Recovery of Historical Memory (Remhi), Guatemala Never Again.
That report documented thousands of cases of human rights violations during the internal armed conflict (1960-1996) and more than 90 percent were attributed to the Army.
serving sentence
Montiel was sentenced in January 2016 for the murder of the tourists, who were traveling on a bus when they were kidnapped and later killed and burned, allegedly mistaken for rival drug traffickers.
The story of how the massacre of the Nicaraguans occurred was revealed by a former Guatemalan police officer who became an “effective collaborator,” according to an investigation carried out at the time by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). EFE
