Genocide Suit Filed Against Ex-Dictator

In the first lawsuit of its kind in Central America, more than 300 Mayas marched through downtown Guatemala City to file genocide charges against the president of the nation’s Congress.

Listing a series of massacres that took place under the dictatorship of Efrain Rios Montt in the early 1980s, the group charged that he pursued a deliberate policy to wipe out the indigenous population during the country’s 35-year civil war.

Under Rios Montt’s regime, hundreds of thousands of indigenous people were killed, raped or driven from their homes, according to the lawsuit, the first in the region to accuse a sitting political figure of genocide.