Louisa Reynolds /

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Court pushed forward reforms that made it possible for the 
Attorney General’s Office to use cooperating witnesses, and 
for witness testimonies’ to be used as evidence in trial”, says 
Pérez. 

In November 2009, the IACHR decreed that the State should 
compensate the victims again for a total of US$3.2 million, 
including those who had lost children in the massacre, and 
that the investigation should continue.

Claudia Paz y Paz, who took over as Attorney General in 
December 2010, reorganized the Human Rights Section and 
created a new section to investigate human rights violations 
committed during the armed conflict. Finally, the huge rusty 
wheel of justice slowly began to turn, and several arrests 
were made in connection with the Dos Erres massacre.

XVI

Jorge Vinicio Orantes Sosa thought he had found a safe 

hiding place in the home of some family members in 

southern Lethbridge, a small city in the province of Alberta, 

Canada, when the name Dos Erres came back to haunt him 

after 29 years. 

In May 2010, he had left his home in Riverside, California, 

where he worked as a martial arts instructor, and had fled to 

Mexico, from where he boarded a flight to Vancouver. From 

there he travelled to Lethbridge, where he thought he could 

go unnoticed if he managed to keep a low profile.

But the agents from ICE’s Human Rights Violators and War 

Crimes Unit, who knocked on his door on January 18, 2011, 

put an end to almost 30 years on the run and took him back 

to the remote Guatemalan village where death had arrived 
loaded with hand grenades and assault rifles.