Ex-Guatemala Soldier Convicted in Murder of Anthropologist
A former soldier was convicted Friday of murder in one of Guatemala’s most notorious civil rights cases and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The court imposed the maximum sentence on Noel de Jesus Beteta after finding him guilty of stabbing Guatemalan social anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang to death.
Beteta, 27, a former sergeant in the presidential high command’s security section, denied any role in the killing of Mack, 40, who was researching the plight of more than 500,000 Guatemalans displaced during 32 years of civil war. She was stabbed 27 times in front of her downtown office on Sept. 11, 1990.
Beteta was captured in Los Angeles in late 1991 and returned to Guatemala for trial.
The case became notorious because Mack was one of the few scientists documenting the impact on her nation’s Indians of the conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives. Many thousands of Indians were killed during the army’s counterinsurgency campaigns in the 1980s.
A 1991 report said several judges and police involved in the case were threatened so severely they resigned their posts.
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