Trial Opens in Guatemalan Bishop’s Slaying

A former military intelligence chief ordered the 1998 slaying of a bishop who headed the human rights office of Guatemala’s Roman Catholic Church, prosecutors alleged in court Friday.

On the first day of trial for five people accused of killing Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, the three-judge panel listened as a court officer began painstakingly reading hundreds of pages of indictments outlining the prosecution’s case.

Gerardi, 75, was bludgeoned to death in the garage of his seminary two days after he issued a report detailing numerous human rights violations by the military during Guatemala’s 35-year civil war.

More than 200,000 people, mostly civilians, died or disappeared during the conflict, which ended with a peace agreement in December 1996.

The indictment accuses retired Col. Disrael Lima Estrada, a former military intelligence chief, of ordering and orchestrating the killing because he feared that Gerardi would testify against him in the future.

Lima and his son, army Capt. Byron Lima Oliva, are charged with murder, as are Father Mario Orantes, Gerardi’s assistant, and Jose Obdulio Villanueva, a former member of the presidential security team.

Seminary cook Margarita Lopez is charged as an accessory.

Prosecutors focused on the elder Lima, portraying him as being terrified of the legal implications of the human rights report, “Guatemala: Never Again,” which Gerardi oversaw.

In the indictment, prosecutors wrote that “the mere threat” of Gerardi being called to testify in cases about atrocities committed during the civil war made Lima want the bishop dead.