Amnesty to cover Guatemala's Rios Montt?

There are still a lot of unknowns at this point, but it looks like the Constitutional Court in Guatemala has opened the door to a ruling that would prevent the re-prosecution of former dictator and one-time convicted génocidaire, Efrain Rios Montt, under the country's 1986 amnesty law.

The decision suggests the case against the retired general be dropped on the basis of a amnesty proclaimed in 1986 by Guatemala's then-military regime, La Prensa Libre daily said Wednesday on its Web site.

The CC, according to the newspaper, ordered trial Judge Carol Patricia Flores to rule on defense lawyers' motion for a dismissal of the charges against the 87-year-old defendant, who presided over one of the bloodiest phases of the nation's 1960-1996 civil war.

In January 2012, a pre-trial judge rejected amnesty claims. In June 2013, the Supreme Court rejected a motion to stop a retrial on the basis that the amnesty law should apply to Rios Montt. Almost an eternity ago as well, August 2013, the Constitutional Court ruled that the amnesty did not extend to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

However, the new ruling, which has not yet been made public, leans towards accepting that the amnesty covers army and guerrilla forces for any and all crimes committed - a blanket amnesty. It looks like Judge Carol Patricia Flores now has to decide whether the amnesty applies to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Prior to the Constitutional Court's overturning of the May guilty verdict and the sending of the trial back to April 19th, Judge Flores had tried to send the trial all the way back to the beginning.

This doesn't look promising. It doesn't matter how tortured its legal reasoning is going to look. The Constitutional Court seems intent on ensuring that Rios Montt and other human rights violators are never held accountable.