Guatemalan Police Archive Finds Evidence in Disappearance Case
A Guest Beneblog by Tamy Guberek (Benetech HRDAG team member from Colombia) There is important news this month from our partners at the Guatemalan National Police Archive, which has worked since 2006 with Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Workers at the archive discovered documents that led to the arrest of two active duty police officers suspected in the 1984 disappearance of university professor and labor leader Édgar Fernando Garcia. Garcia disappeared after being placed in police detention in Guatemala City. While there is no public information about exactly what evidence these documents contain, prosecutors ordered the arrest of officer Abraham Lancerio Gomez on charges of illegal arrest, forced disappearance, kidnapping, abuse of office and breach of humanitarian duties. According to the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre, Officer Ramirez Rivers, a former officer in the Guatemalan National Police, was also arrested. The National Police, which was implicated in ...