The assault that was suffered by the delegate at the end of the mission to Guatemala is yet
Posted in General on 27. Aug, 2010
“The assault that was suffered by the delegate at the end of the mission to Guatemala is yet another example of the dangers faced on a daily basis by human rights activists in the country.”Amnesty International’s London-based Guatemala specialist, Tracy Ulltveit-Moe, who was with Ms Bocek, said death threats against rights activists have increased in the 18-month reign of President Alfonso Portillo.Intimidation in Guatemala is almost on par with the urban violence of the late Seventies, she said. Machine-gun attacks and bombed-out offices have become routine. Judges, lawyers and politicians have been lynched, car-bombed and shot at. The government has ordered the army to help the police fight criminal gangs. Coup rumours are rife.A court has ordered a genocide investigation of two former Guatemalan dictators, Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt, accused of ordering the mass slaughter of Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1983.Ms Bocek has been working with Mayans in the Guatemalan highlands during the bloody 36-year civil war in which the majority ethnic group bore the brunt of state-sponsored violence.The conflict ended in 1996 with peace accords but orders have now been given for mass graves to be exhumed. Rios Montt, who heads the country’s Congress, is also being sued by the survivors of massacres in 12 Mayan towns.Human rights activists had begun to praise the Guatemalan justice system for daring to challenge the military’s impunity.
Last week, a breakthrough court verdict convicted senior army officers over the political murder of a leftist cleric, Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was beaten to death with a concrete block after releasing a church report blaming the military for most of the village massacres in which 200,000 people were killed.Those found guilty, the former head of military intelligence, retired Colonel Disrael Lima; his son Byron Lima, an army captain; Jose Obdulio Villanueva, a former member of a presidential security team; and Bishop Gerardi’s assistant priest, Mario Orantes, all plan to appeal.. The story of Timothy McVeigh and the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing is to be made into a television mini series, it was confirmed yesterday. The story of Timothy McVeigh and the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing is to be made into a television mini series, it was confirmed yesterday.
The US network CBS has bought the rights to a book about the bomber just days after he was executed by lethal injection in Terre Haute, Indiana.The mini-series will be based on the book American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, written by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck. It was written after 75 hours of interviews with McVeigh, who killed 168 people during the 1995 attack.A CBS spokesman confirmed its plans, saying: “We have optioned the book on McVeigh and it is in development at CBS.” Producer Gerry Abrams told Variety magazine that the series would not just be about McVeigh, but also about the others affected by the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah federal building.”When I read the book, I was left feeling that because so much attention had been devoted to McVeigh, that the public was unaware of so many individual acts of heroism from people involved,” he said.While a number of the survivors and relatives of the victims are likely to be upset by the project, Mr Abrams said the series would also feature people such as the policeman who arrested McVeigh an hour after the bombing for the minor offence of not having a registration plate on his car. He said the last thing he wanted to do was to “further McVeigh’s legacy”..
Israel’s Supreme Court blocked the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, yesterday from giving a senior security job to a former Shin Bet agent who has admitted beating to death two Palestinian guerrillas. Israel’s Supreme Court blocked the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, yesterday from giving a senior security job to a former Shin Bet agent who has admitted beating to death two Palestinian guerrillas. Answering a petition from the left-wing party Meretz the court ruled that ex-agent Ehud Yatom could not take up Mr Sharon’s job offer as head of a counter-terrorism team until it had reviewed the case in detail. Five years ago, on his retirement from Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, Mr Yatom told an Israeli newspaper that he killed the two Palestinians by beating their skulls with a rock in April 1984.The killings, which became known as the “Bus 300″ scandal, happened after four Palestinian gunmen hijacked a bus, threatening to kill the passengers. Two of the guerrillas, and one passenger, were killed in a rescue raid by Israeli commandos, and the other two were arrested by Shin Bet agents.