Linked Killings Undercut Trust In Guatemala

The police officers might have been hit men tricked into believing that the Salvadoran politicians were Colombian drug dealers posing as representatives to the parliament, Sperisen said. A political motive in El Salvador could not be discounted, nor could a link between the Salvadorans and drug dealers, he said. Four new suspects with alleged links to drug trafficking were arrested Tuesday and accused of ordering the killings.

Sperisen and Avila, the Salvadoran police chief, said the slain Guatemalan officers had confessed, although Sperisen noted the obvious: "They can't repeat their declarations." The alleged admissions have been widely reported in the news media, but attorneys for the four officers painted a different picture.

"They said they were innocent," Carlos Pocon said of his clients, the slain officers Jose Korki Lopez Arreaga, Jose Adolfo Gutierrez and Marvin Langen Escobar Mendez.

Alfredo Vasquez, the attorney for Luis Arturo Herrera Lopez, called the officers "scapegoats," who had been killed to cover up the identity of the real assassins.

"The atmosphere here makes it seem like my clients were responsible, as if they were devils," Vasquez said. "But there was no confession, and that alarms me."

The other murders -- those of the officers themselves -- are still muddied by conflicting reports. They were transferred from a lockup in Guatemala City to the maximum-security El Boqueron prison, about 40 miles east of the city, without their lawyers being notified, Vasquez said. Witnesses have said that gunmen sneaked into El Boqueron with visitors and killed the officers. But Sperisen said he believes the killers came from inside the prison. It's unlikely, he said, that the killers could have gotten past, or even co-opted, three rings of security -- the army, the police and the prison guards.

A riot broke out after the killings, and the prison warden and several guards were taken hostage, Sperisen said. The warden, as well as more than 20 other men -- mostly guards -- have been arrested, but no one has been charged with the murders, Sperisen said.

This month, one of Sperisen's top aides, Javier Figueroa, resigned and left Guatemala with his family for Costa Rica. Figueroa, who was a gynecologist before taking a high-ranking police job, played a key role in arresting the four officers and now fears for his life, Sperisen said. But with so many questions swirling about the case, Figueroa's abrupt departure generated speculation that he had something to hide.

"It's a question of perceptions," said Kompass, the U.N. official.

The case has also become entangled in presidential politics ahead of an election due in September. Otto Perez Molina, a candidate who served as a general during a devastating civil war, filed a complaint against Vielmann for allegedly allowing two officially sanctioned death squads to operate within the nation's security forces.

"He knew what was happening and he did nothing," Perez Molina said in an interview.

Perez Molina -- who Vielmann says is "playing politics" -- accuses the elite Criminal Investigation Division of operating as a death squad in a campaign of "social cleansing," killing small-time drug dealers to eliminate competition for major drug traffickers. Guatemala's independent human rights attorney general, the Catholic Church and the University of San Carlos of Guatemala this month demanded that the division be disbanded.