Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

P

40

members of the Kaibil troop, which were never carried 
out. Famdegua then demanded that the Attorney General’s 
Office should transfer the case from La Libertad to its 
special Human Rights Section in Guatemala City, which the 
authorities eventually complied with. However, the accused 
soldiers’ defense attorney, Francisco Palomo, who is currently 
defending former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, on trial for 
genocide, lodged no less that forty appeals, demanding that 
the Kaibil soldiers be granted amnesty under the provisions 
of a law that was approved in 1986 under the Óscar Mejía 
Víctores dictatorship.

Members of the Guatemalan armed forces accused of 
human rights violations – including Ríos Montt – have 
sought amnesty on many occasions, but their appeals have 
been repeatedly rejected as the 1996 National Reconciliation 
Act states that those accused of torture, genocide or forced 
disappearances have no right to seek amnesty.   

In September 1996, ODHAG, Famdegua and the Center for 
Justice and International Law (CEJIL), took the Dos Erres 
case to the Interamerican Court of Human Rights (IACHR) 
and in April 2000, an amicable solution was reached when 
the Guatemalan State promised to compensate the victims 
and prosecute those responsible for the massacre.

In 2001, President Alfonso Portillo apologized for the 
massacre on behalf of the State and 176  people who had lost 
family members in Dos Erres were given a total of US$1.8 
million. However, those who had lost children during the 
massacre were left empty handed and no progress was made 
in terms of bringing the case to trial. For this reason, in 2006, 
the organizations acting on behalf of the victims decided to 
withdraw from the agreement and returned to the IACHR. 
“The State thought that the compensation scheme would