| Page 3 of 3 < |
Linked Killings Undercut Trust In Guatemala
Guatemalan police guard the site where four Salvadorans were found slain in February. Six days later, four policemen arrested in the case were killed in prison.
(By Rodrigo Abd -- Associated Press)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Sperisen, a 6-foot-2-inch, 280-pound former Guatemala City official with a shock of bright orange hair, does not deny that there is corruption in his forces. He estimated that he could easily fire 10 percent of his 19,500 officers if Guatemalan law did not require a lengthy appeals process. Vielmann estimated that 40 percent of the police should be fired. As calls grow for both men to resign, they are portraying themselves as reformers.
Vielmann, who acknowledges police have been hired for mafia-style hits, talked of "a titanic battle" against corruption. More than 1,000 police officers have been fired in the past 2 1/2 years, he said, and 250 are in jail. Still, Sperisen said, "it's almost impossible to clean up the force."
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Guatemalan policeman described a highly structured shakedown and payoff system. Police officers bully business owners into paying bribes, he said, and the bribes are split with supervisors, who withhold promotions if rank-and-file officers don't deliver.
Narco-traffickers sometimes pay $4,000 to $5,000 or more each month to ensure their shipments get through, the officer said.
"They break people," he added. "There are officers who are 10 percent corrupt who become 100 percent corrupt."
Helen Mack, a Salvadoran rights activist, said there is "total impunity" in Guatemala.
Mack's sister, an anthropologist, was murdered on Sept. 11, 1990, shortly after publishing a study accusing government forces of massacring Mayan Indians during the civil war. A member of Guatemala's presidential guard was convicted of stabbing Myrna Mack 27 times outside her office in the middle of the day.
It took more than 13 years for Helen Mack to persuade Guatemala's supreme court to convict Army Col. Juan Valencia Osorio of ordering the killing. But in January 2004, days after his 30-year sentence was reinstated, Valencia fled. Mack says he was aided by a special military unit. He remains a fugitive.
Still, she said, the truth came out, and in Guatemala that means something.
Vasquez, the attorney, is not expecting answers about the killings of the Salvadoran politicians and the Guatemalan policemen, the case now roiling his country, any faster than Mack got hers.
"We might know the truth," Vasquez said, "in 20 years."
