Guatemala ex-dictator to go back on trial

Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will go back on trial after the nation's highest court threw out his genocide and war crimes conviction in the latest twist in complex proceedings. Rios Montt went on trial in March on charges of ordering the massacre of Maya Indians in the 1980s as part of a scorched earth policy in the most brutal chapter of a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. He was convicted on May 10 of genocide and war crimes in a historic ruling and got an 80-year sentence. However, on Monday, the Constitutional Court struck down the conviction and the sentence. The ruling, by three votes to two, annulled all proceedings that took place after the trial was ordered temporarily halted on April 19, due to a technicality. Although the conviction was overturned, most of the trial and testimony was left intact. Now, the trial goes back to the point at which it stood on April 19. The judges in the new phase will be the same as in the original trial. No date for the new phase was set. The Constitutional Court upheld defense lawyers' claim of a procedural error. It said this error occurred when the court that ultimately convicted the former dictator went ahead with the trial on April 30 without considering a motion filed by the defense with an appeals court. Rios Montt was rushed to a military hospital a week ago after fainting in court before a hearing on reparations for victims, his lawyer said. Rios Montt's conviction had made him the first Latin American ex-dictator to be convicted of genocide -- defined as a systematic attempt to exterminate an entire people for political, racial, religious or other reasons. His alleged crimes occurred during a brief but particularly gruesome stretch of a war that started in 1960, dragged on for 36 years and left around 200,000 people dead or missing, according to a 1999 UN-sponsored report. More than 90 percent of the human rights violations took place between 1978 and 1984. Under Rios Montt's rule from 1982-83, the army carried out a scorched earth policy against indigenous peoples, accusing them of backing rebel forces. Rios Montt and his former intelligence chief Jose Rodriguez were charged with ordering the army to carry out 15 massacres that left 1,771 Maya Ixil Indians dead in Quiche in northern Guatemala. Rodriguez was acquitted. During the trial, Rios Montt strenuously denied the charges saying: "I did not engage in genocide." "I never authorized, never signed, never ordered an attack against a race, an ethnicity or a religion. I never did it!" Following the initial conviction, the United States said it was a chance for the Central American nation to move towards reconciliation.