Guatemalan Priest Denies Role in Bishop’s Slaying

A priest who returned here from the United States to face murder charges denied Wednesday that he had any role in the 1998 slaying of his former boss, outspoken human rights leader Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi.

Gerardi, 75, was bludgeoned to death with a concrete block in a seminary, two days after he presented a report blaming the military for the vast majority of 200,000 deaths or disappearances during Guatemala’s 35-year civil war.

Though many have accused the military of killing Gerardi, prosecutors earlier this month charged his assistant, Father Mario Orantes, in the slaying for the second time.

“I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t do anything,” Orantes told journalists Wednesday from a hospital bed in his first comments since returning to the country Feb. 9.

“All I did was find my brother, Bishop Gerardi, murdered,” said Orantes, 42, at the hospital in a northern suburb of Guatemala City. His lawyers say he is too sick with an unidentified nervous-system problem to be taken into police custody.

Orantes, who told police he found Gerardi’s body in the seminary’s garage, was arrested in the weeks following the killing. The Roman Catholic priest spent seven months in jail, but prosecutors never said what motive he may have had for killing his superior.

Orantes was released and allowed to travel to Houston for medical reasons last fall after church leaders and human rights groups protested that authorities were overlooking possible military involvement in the crime.

Judge Flor de Maria Garcia ordered Orantes to return to Guatemala in February after a “reexamination” of the nearly 2-year-old evidence on record.

Orantes was charged with murder again March 10. Since then, police officers have been posted outside his room.

“After all this time here, I still do not know the reasons I have again been charged. If the evidence was so important, you would think I would have heard about it by now,” Orantes said.

Court-appointed doctors will decide Friday whether Orantes is well enough to be taken into police custody or should remain hospitalized.

Orantes’ lawyers will meet with De Maria Garcia today in an attempt to persuade her to dismiss the new charges.

“We are confident we can show that the witness testimony that prompted these charges is contradictory and that there is no other evidence that points to Father Orantes,” said defense lawyer Luis Mazariegos. “There can be no doubt he is innocent, and we will show that.”