Talk:Efraín Ríos Montt

message: It seems to me that labelling Ríos Montt as convicted (as is currently being done here in the short description and in the categories) may be problematic.  A Guatemalan court did in fact convict and sentence him for war crimes and genocide in 2013, but that verdict was soon overturned by the country's Constitutional Court and a retrial was never completed.  I think that a lawyer could argue that Ríos Montt was therefore not, in the end, actually convicted of anything.  Is there a Wikipedia policy about such cases?
I may add that this isn't just a legal quibble.  When the Constitutional Court quashed Ríos Montt's conviction, many journalists commented on the fragility and corruption of the Guatemalan judiciary, but this cuts both ways.  Many people, including foreign observers and ordinary Guatemalans, have said that the army and the death squads behaved more lawlessly under his predecessor Gen. Lucas García and under his successor Gen. Mejía Víctores, neither of whom ever went to trial, perhaps because they weren't politically significant figures anymore after the return to democracy.
I've tried to look seriously into the evidence that was used to convict Ríos Montt in 2013.  His defense was that, though the army did commit war crimes during the counter-insurgency campaign of 1982-83 (including massacres of civilians, rapes, and tortures), this had not been with Ríos Montt's knowledge or under his orders.  This isn't entirely implausible on the face of it, especially considering that Ríos Montt did not, in fact, ever have a solid hold over the entire army (which has always been the most powerful social institution in Guatemala), as evidenced by the fact that he lasted less than 17 months in power before being overthrown by his own Defense Minister.  Ríos Montt had been on the outs with the army high command since 1973, had been publicly denounced as a "communist" by the far-right during the 1974 electoral campaign, dropped out of active military service altogether by 1977, and had not been directly involved in the planning of the 1982 coup that ended up putting him in power.
What evidence was presented in the 2013 trial that Ríos Montt had actually ordered the crimes for which he was convicted?  I can find only two mentioned online (see, e.g., here).  One of them seems to me so weak that it may even bring into question the good faith of the prosecution: In the course of a long interview at the Presidential Palace that he gave in 1982 to US journalist and filmmaker Pamela Yates, Yates asked him if he really controlled the army on the ground (a question evidently motivated by a widespread perception at the time that he didn't) and Ríos Montt responded: "If I can’t control the Army, then what am I doing here?".  Under the circumstances, could he have said anything else?  Using this as evidence in the 2013 trial seems to me a "gotcha" move with no probatory value.
The other evidence mentioned is a cache of official military documents related to an Operación Sofía.  Here this is presented as clear evidence of a deliberate policy of genocide under Ríos Montt.  But I've gone through the entire file and nothing in it is either signed by or addressed to Ríos Montt.  If you read the evaluation (in Spanish) prepared by Kate Doyle of the National Security Archives, you'll find that she says that the documents show that "the chain of command functioned at all times and that the High Command —which at the time would have included the Commander General of the Army and de facto Minister of Defense Efraín Ríos Montt and the Vice-minister of National Defense Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores, both charged in [the case brought by Rigoberta Menchú in Spain]— were perfectly informed of operations in the field" (emphasis added to highlight the use of the subjunctive, presumably because the names of Ríos Montt and Mejía Víctores are not actually in the documents).  But Doyle also notes that the file covers only "one month and three days" of operations in one specific location (Nebaj, Quiché) and that nothing in the file "gives any explicit information about the perpetration of massacres". 
I therefore don't think that, particularly in the absence of a settled legal conviction for a crime, the characterization of Ríos Montt as a "convicted war criminal" can be regarded as totally uncontroversial and neutral. - Eb.hoop2 (talk) 11:47, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: @Eb.hoop2 at the time of writing this reply, Ríos is no longer labelled as convicted, except to mention he was convicted at some point. Thinker78 (talk) 00:42, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''Convicted'' war criminal?