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 / The long road to justice

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buy off the victims so that they would forget about seeking 
justice”, says FAMDEGUA’s lawyer, Édgar Pérez Archila. 

Two years later, President Álvaro Colom asked for Attorney 
General Juan Luis Florido’s resignation, under strong 
pressure from CICIG and civil society organizations that 
accused him of obstructing investigations.  

Florido was replaced by Amílcar Velásquez de Zárate, who 
ordered that prosecutors should prioritize human rights 
violations committed during the armed conflict, including 
the genocide case against Ríos Montt, the Dos Erres 
massacre and the Plan de Sánchez massacre, committed in 
the department of Baja Verapaz in 1982.

Under his administration, the Attorney General’s Office also 
signed an agreement with FAMDEGUA, which took on the 
task of providing forensic evidence for all the trials involving 
wartime human rights violations.

Pérez Archila explains that although Florido’s resignation 
was important in terms of achieving justice, there was also 
a whole series of changes within the Guatemalan judiciary 
that made it possible for the Dos Erres case to be brought to 
trial.

“With the arrival of Velásquez Zárate, the Attorney 
General’s Office became far more receptive to human rights 
cases and gave more support to the prosecutors in charge 
of investigating the case, but that was just part of the story. 
Many factors came together at that time, such as the election 
of a new Supreme Court, in 2009, which promoted respect 
for human rights and guaranteed that Guatemala could 
meet its international obligations with regards to human 
rights treaties. The Penal Chamber of the new Supreme