Guatemala: Mack Case Goes to Supreme Court Hearings to Take Place Thursday - 13-Year Case Could End Soon

NEW YORK - The Guatemalan Supreme Court should overturn the ruling of an appeals court which set free three senior military officers who allegedly ordered the 1990 stabbing death of the anthropologist Myrna Mack, the Lawyers Committee said today. The Supreme Court will hold a hearing into the case on Thursday.

"The Supreme Court must ensure that justice is finally done in this case," said Lorna Davidson, a Lawyers Committee attorney who has been following the case closely. "It is almost thirteen years since Myrna Mack was killed and her case has come to represent the impunity that still prevails in Guatemala for human rights violations."

Over the years since the killing, witnesses, prosecutors and judges involved in the case have been harassed, intimidated and threatened by those who wish the case would simply disappear.

The three military officers were accused of ordering and orchestrating the surveillance and killing of Mack after she published research showing the impact of army activity during Guatemala's civil war on rural indigenous communities.

The case has made headlines in Guatemala, since it represents the first time senior military officers were brought to court on charges stemming from human rights abuses committed during Guatemala’s civil war.

In October 2002, one of the three - Colonel Juan Valencia Osorio - was convicted by a trial court for his role in the murder and sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. The court found that Valencia Osorio had ordered Sgt. Noel de Jesús Beteta Alvarez to kill Mack and had given him a file on her. Beteta Alvarez has been in prison since 1993 for stabbing Mack to death on the street in front of her office. Valencia Osorio's two co-defendants - General Edgar Augosto Godoy Gaitan and Colonel Juan Valencia Oliva Carerra - were acquitted by the trial court.

But Guatemala’s Fourth Appeals Court reversed the conviction of Valencia Osorio and upheld the two acquittals on May 7, 2003. The court also ordered the release from custody of all three defendants. In an analysis released this week, the Lawyers Committee and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) called the appeals court 's reasoning for its decision “opaque and problematic.”

Using a procedure known as cassation, Myrna Mack’s sister Helen filed a second appeal, this time to the Supreme Court, on both substantive and procedural grounds.
Should the Supreme Court accept the substantive grounds of appeal, it may reverse the earlier appeals court decision. If the Court finds that the appeals court made procedural errors in its decision, it may send the case back to the appeals court for a new decision once those errors are removed. After Thursday’s hearing, the Supreme Court has fifteen days in which to give its decision.