Guatemala: UN mission deplores impunity in murder case8 May – The United Nations mission in Guatemala said today it was "lamentable" that 12 years after the murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack during the Central American country's civil war, the intellectual authors of "this brutal crime" had still not been identified and punished.
"Each day that this case continues without resolution corroborates the idea that justice is impossible in Guatemala and that there are sectors of society who are above the law," the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala, (MINUGUA), said after an appeals court overturned a 30-year jail term against an army colonel.
Regardless of the rights of defendants to appeal, the Mission said, "Once again, impunity has been granted in a signal case that occurred during the armed conflict. No country that claims to build a state of law can afford the luxury of allowing such a transcendental case to remain unpunished."
The appeals court overturned the 30-year jail term against Col. Juan Valencia Osorio and confirmed the acquittals of Col. Juan Oliva Carrera and Gen. Edgar Godoy Gaitan. Ms. Mack was stabbed to death as she left a social science research institute in Guatemala City on 11 September 1990.
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