Guatemala to open police archive to probe abuses

[Judi Lynn]

Guatemala to open police archive to probe abuses
03 Mar 2006 00:03:19 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Mica Rosenberg

GUATEMALA CITY, March 2 (Reuters) - Guatemala plans to digitize and eventually open to the public millions of police files that could hold evidence of torture and disappearances committed by security forces during the country's civil war.
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But in a country where a U.N.-backed truth report implicated army and police forces in the murder of thousands of civilians, even the most mundane police business can have ominous undertones.

After a U.S.-backed military coup overthrew the government of President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, thousands were arrested and their records stamped with political affiliations, said Gustavo Meono, lead investigator at the archive. "We found a record for Victor Manuel Gutierrez, the country's most important labor leader between 1944 and 1954," said Meono. "On the back of his application for a motorcycle license it said in big red letters: 'Number one communist in Guatemala.'"

During the civil war, union leaders, community organizers and university students were regular targets for arrest, torture and disappearances.
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Prosecutions using the files as evidence are still a long way off, said Meono, since many of those implicated in state crimes are still in power.
"This is without a doubt the largest and most extraordinary collection from a formerly repressive state institution within the Western hemisphere," said Kate Doyle from the Washington-based National Security Archive.
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