THE CASE

The clunky gold earrings Marta Arrivillaga de Carpio always wears are silent testimony to the wall of impunity still existing in Guatemala. So are the names of witnesses and a highly secret videotape languishing, for now, in a bank vault somewhere in Guatemala. Marta de Carpio was wearing the expensive gold earrings that July night in 1993 when masked assailants ambushed a vehicle and killed her husband, Jorge Carpio, and three others. They took five items, including the quetzal equivalent of less than $50, a pair of sunglasses, two pocket knives and a cheap watch. But they left valuable jewelry — including the gold earrings — electronic goods and other items worth thousands of dollars.

A band of 25 to 30 men forced the two vehicles to stop. They wore black ski masks and carried a variety of weapons, including sidearms, M-16s and Galils. The ambush occurred at kilometer 141 on the highway between Los Encuentros and Chichicastenango in the western highlands province of Quiche. It is a place known as the Molino El Tesoro bridge. The armed men approached the first van, driven by Ricardo Sanpedro. Carpio was riding with his wife, Mario López, Juan Vicente Villacorta and Sidney Shaw. Sanpedro and López were ordered out of the vehicle and told to surrender their weapons. At this point, Jorge Carpio was threatened by name.

A second group surrounded the other vehicle, a pickup truck, and ordered its three occupants out. The assailants then shot and killed AlejandroAvila and Rigoberto Rivas and gravely wounded 16-year-old Sidney Shaw Jr.

The men around the Carpio van searched Juan Vicente Villacorta. As another vehicle came around the curve, they shot Villacorta point blank, also firing at the approaching vehicle. The apparent leader of the group then gave the order to kill Carpio. One man shot him three times in the groin and the left buttocks. He died at the hospital in Santa Cruz del Quiche later that night. Shaw and San Pedro, two of the survivors, arrived at police headquarters in Chichicastenango, but were refused help.

Marta de Carpio ducked the shooting and survived. She insists the attackers were members of a civil defense patrol, known by its Spanish acronym as PAC. These patrols, backed by the regular military, are blamed by local and international human rights groups for many extra judicial killings in Guatemala.

On leaving police headquarters, Shaw and Sanpedro were met by Manolo Rodríguez of the National Center Union Party, who was giving a ride to soldiers. Another group of soldiers caught a ride to the scene of the crime in Shaw’s minivan to assist the wounded.

Because no troops were patrolling that night, the men would have had to get dressed, put on boots and leave military headquarters to meet the victims at the police station. Gen. Victor Velasquez Echeverria, then commander of Zone 20, the area where Carpio was killed, said that under special circumstances the troops could have decided on their own to go to the scene of the crime without consulting headquarters.

These troops were the first government authority to arrive at Molino El Tesoro, yet the action is not recorded in the military zone register. The complainants persistently asked for the name of the lieutenant and the members of his troop, but those were never revealed.

López and Sanpedro discovered a bullet under the seat of the minivan and turned it over to an army intelligence captain. The bullet disappeared and was never given to the appropriate government authorities.

The police began combing the area of the crime on the morning of July 4. Later in the day, autopsies were performed in Guatemala City on the four victims. Color photos of the victims’ wounds were taken. The autopsies reports and photos subsequently vanished.

The night of July 4, during the funeral, Col. Otto Perez Molina, chief of the presidential military command (Estado Mayor Presidencial) , and Col. Ricardo Bustamante, head of Army Archives, approached López. He was taken to a small room and questioned. The other survivors also were questioned in this non-official manner by Maj. Mario V. Gómez Ayala and Commissioner Carlos Marroquín.

During the attack , López was kicked by one of the assailants, whose boot left an imprint on López’ pants. Carlos Palacios de la Cerda, an adviser to then-president Ramiro de Leon Carpio, later requested —and received — the pants from López. But the pants have not been seen since.

Within two days Interior Minister Arnoldo Ortiz Moscoso vowed that the criminals would be arrested within 48 hours. That same day, President de Leon Carpio himself announced the arrest of two members of a gang called the Churuneles. He described them as common criminals. By July 7, 11 Churuneles members had been detained.

Official statements suggested that the entire band was responsible for the Carpio attack. But the Churuneles had only .22-caliber weapons and a toy gun, according to the police. Carpio and his three colleagues were murdered with .45-caliber and 9mm weapons. No items robbed from the Carpio caravan were found in the possession of the Churuneles.

The Churuneles weapons were never sent to the court of jurisdiction at Santa Cruz de Quiche; the arms never surfaced again. Paraffin tests given the detained gang members turned up negative. This was not revealed until the Carpio family persistently demanded that the results be released.

In time, only four of the Churuneles were charged with the crime. The others were charged only with possessing arms and robbery.

During the months since Carpio’s death, evidence has een lost or tampered with; witnesses intimidated; judges, public prosecutors and complainants threatened. Nevertheless, new evidence has been found, according to highly confidential interviews conducted by the IAPA in the village of San Pedro Jocopilas in Quiche province.

So far the new evidence has been blocked from being presented in court. The trial, being conducted under Guatemala’s old legal code based on the European justice system, is already past the stage for introducing evidence. To admit the new proof, the complainants tried to return the trial to the evidence phase. They cited a court error in allowing the charge of "injuries" in the wounding of one passenger to be changed to "attempted murder" without giving the defendants the opportunity to defend themselves on the new charges.

The decision was made by acting Judge Aníbal Rodríguez Alfaro while First Criminal Court Judge Carlos Villatoro Shunimann was on vacation in January.Villatoro said later he agreed with the decision and respected the acting judge’s right to make it. Villatoro seemed to be blocking the admission of new evidence, which includes secret testimony and rebuttal to alibis.

Karen Fischer, Carpio’s daughter-in-law, termed the decision "a legal maneuver" to obstruct the case. Public prosecutor Abraham Méndez called the decision "totally negative." He added: "The assassination of Jorge Carpio was not the work of common criminals, but the result of a conspiracy that has a series of aspects that I intend to reveal; it is therefore necessary to dig deeper in the case and not to emit hasty verdicts."

The new evidence pointed at the patrolmen as the material suspects and laid the foundation for accusing the army and G-2, the intelligence arm , as intellectual authors of the Carpio murder.

The chief suspect under the previous evidence is Juan Acabal Patzán, awaiting trial on another murder charge. Two others, originally arrested as "common bandits," remain in jail. Ten civil defense patrolmen are free on bail.

At a meeting in March 1994, President de León Carpio told Marta de Carpio and Karen Fischer that examinations by the FBI and Mexican ballistics experts show that the weapon confiscated from Patzán, a civil patrolman, matched the one that killed Carpio and his colleagues. Marta de Carpio called that impossible, since the same man could not have shot all the bullets at two separate vehicles, killing four men and wounding a youth with the same bullets.

More than a year later, in May 1995, the two women had a second meeting with President de Leon Carpio, the interior minister and the attorney general. They learned that the chamber and trigger of Patzán’s weapon had been changed.

Judge Villatoro Shunimann, interviewed by the IAPA, said, "You have to accept the letter of the law; I only apply the laws." He made light of the change from the injuries charge to attempted murder in the case of the wounded youth, Sydney Shaw Jr., without giving the defendants the right of defense on these charges.

The judge insisted: "There’s a process. There’s a system. And the system says everything has to be done at a certain time. And the period for presenting evidence has passed. It’s lamentable; it’s sad, but sometimes there are things you can’t do because the system does not permit it."

Villatoro said he wasn’t threatened or bribed. Indeed, he called himself among the fortunate few judges who haven’t been threatened for one case or another.

Despite the recent change in government, the general atmosphere of threats and intimidation continues in Guatemala. The public prosecutor has received repeated threats and wants to leave the country with his family as soon as the trial is over. New witnesses fear for their lives and also plan to leave after they testify. Their names are hidden in a bank vault, but both the complainants and the attorney general acknowledge they cannot protect the witnesses forever.

The new evidence supports the theory that the murder of Carpio was politically motivated. Carpio, a leader of the National Center Union Party, opposed amnesty for soldiers and civilians involved in the so-called "self-coup" instigated by former President Jorge Serrano Elias on May 25, 1993.

According to his family, Carpio received several threatening calls after his political party refused to back the amnesty. They say Carpio told them about calls from José Domingo Samayoa, then defense minister, demanding that he throw his party’s weight behind the amnesty bill. Carpio refused to change the editorial line of his newspaper to support the amnesty, and he wrote openly about the threats in El Gráfico.

Samayoa did not acknowledge interview requests made by the newspaper, Prensa Libre, on behalf of the IAPA.

Human rights activists, as well as press and diplomatic observers, also think that Carpio’s death may have been a cloaked warning to his cousin, Ramiro de Leon Carpio, who was named president after Serrano was forced out. De Leon Carpio had been Guatemala’s attorney general for human rights and was highly regarded in human rights circles. But with the death of his cousin, he seemed to pull back on his aggressive stance. He also insisted, much to the dismay of others in his family, that the attack had been the work of common criminals.

New evidence strongly points to participation by civil defense patrolmen directed by military authorities; at the very least it suggests a cover-up by the military.

THE PATROLS

The civil defense patrols, a pro-army militia, were started under the government of Romeo Lucas García and reinforced strongly under the government of Efrain Rios Montt. Entire human rights reports have been written on the subject of civil defense patrols. The civil defense patrol in San Pedro Jocopilas is already the subject of a human rights suit by the Diocesan Human Rights Office for carrying out massacres.

A nun in the dusty town of San Pedro Jocopilas said she found the town enveloped in a "horrible silence" when she arrived there four years ago. Her neighborhood was filled with widows, victims of the violence by civil defense patrols and army.

"Freddy" Armando López Girón is the mayor of San Pedro Jocopilas and the brother of Carlos López Girón, the former governor of Quiche. The police accuse the ex-governor of having a hands-on role in the murder of Carpio and his three colleagues.

Recently elected by a landslide in this predominantly Christian Democrat town, "Freddy" López seems anything but the local sheriff. Articulate and soft-spoken, he is, in fact, the local school principal and seems fonder of talking about development theory than defending law and order.

He downplayed the present role of the civil defense patrols, saying they are now entirely voluntary and in transition toward a force to help the community. He ardently defended his brother’s innocence, as well as that of the former mayor of the town, also accused in the Carpio case. He refused to say if he believed in the innocence of the other civil defense patrollers.

"Freddy" López Girón does not believe that the Carpio murder was the work of common criminals, and he knows the region well. He does believe that there was some political motive behind the crime but doesn’t believe that his brother was involved. He characterizes the evidence as "extremely weak" and calls for a new investigation, possibly aided by an investigative agency from another country, such as the FBI.

A portrait of Vinicio Cerezo, Guatemala’s president three terms ago, still hangs over "Freddy" López’s desk as a reminder of "the process of democracy" begun in 1985. He noted that Cerezo was also a Christian Democrat and proudly showed the party flag on his desk. He said that his brother and the other civil defense patrolmen were being framed by town members of the UCN, Carpio’s party. Although there was no evidence supporting that thesis, all the accused civil defense patrolmen were Christian Democrats.

Unlike other parts of southern Quiche, where thousands of men have refused to continue patrolling, the force in San Pedro Jocopilas remains strong. When guerrilla columns disappeared from the southern part of the highlands, many members, supported by international human rights organizations and the Runujel Junam Council of Ethnic Communities (CERJ), began to insist on the right not to patrol, based on the 1985 constitution.

According to a study by the Attorney General for Human Rights in collaboration with the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation, the patrols are some of the strongest in Quiche: "The town was strongly hit by the war, and much of its population dispersed. The remaining population is quite hostile. The civil defense committees have a strong presence of social control and limit the presence of outside agents."

Another study on institutional violence in Guatemala, by Joel Solomon of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, found that although the leaders of the civil defense patrols were civilians, they maintained "routine contact" with military officials. Meetings, Solomon found, were often held at military bases.

"Civil defense patrollers in San Pedro Jocopilas have confirmed suspicions that the patrol members assume the role of policeman, judge, jury and executioner, even in the case of common criminals," Solomon wrote.

IRREGULARITIES AND OBSTRUCTIONS

Marta de Carpio testified that during the assault one of the assailants cried out, "Kill Jorge. Kill Carpio." Whether or not it definitively can be proved that Carpio’s attackers were common criminals or members of a civil patrol remains uncertain. But government irregularities and obstructions in the Carpio case can be corroborated.

In July 1995, the Inter American Human Rights Court ruled that the Guatemalan government had to file a monthly report on the status of the Carpio case and to provide protection to the family and prosecutor. But even the government reports issued by the president’s human rights office show the government’s ambivalence toward this case.

For instance, a recent report by the human rights office complained that the Carpio family was not cooperating in rendering testimony about the threats. Karen Fischer, enraged, asked for a government letter saying that she was communicating weekly and keeping the government informed.

In an IAPA interview, then Attorney General Ramses Cuestas indicated his own ambivalence toward the case.

At first, he seemed to make a strong statement, declaring, "There have been three or four commanders of the 20th Military Zone (responsible for the area where Carpio was killed) since that time. In my opinion, that indicates the killing was not the work of one person alone, but rather of an institutional nature. The attitude of protection or support of a cover-up has persisted."

He added: "It could be institutional. But it also could be that the people directly responsible [for the killing] are at the bottom and middle of the chain of command."

It is still unclear what attitude the new civilian government will adopt toward the Carpio case. Thus far, President Alvaro Arzú’s administration has shown a willingness to make changes in the military command. But it remains an open question whether his government, narrow victors in recent elections, can remain autonomous from traditional military pressures.

In a two-hour interview with the Carpio family on Feb. 15, 1996, Arzú told Karen Fischer and Marta de Carpio that he would take a look at the court documents. He added, after questioning by Fischer, that he would recommend the investigation be extended, but said he could not offer a new one.

When he said that the executive branch was not responsible, Fischer responded that the presidency could provide the following documentation for the investigation: The names of those soldiers who first investigated the attack; the report from the 20th Military Zone; the capture of the patrolmen who have not yet been arrested; the name of the official in the 20th Military Zone who received a gun shell taken from the van; the location of the pair of pants worn by López (with the imprint of a military boot) that disappeared after being turned over to a military official; the location of reports by FBI, Mexican and Spanish experts regarding ballistics evidence.

Karen Fischer, who was also Carpio’s private secretary, has tenaciously investigated the case. She has received death threats, her car was smashed by armed men, and she has had to spend time out of the country.

The trail of murder with impunity dates back to the gathering of physical evidence by police and military the night of the crime and the next morning. The evidence was never formally submitted, and bullets taken from the victims’bodies and a pair of pants bearing what appeared to be the imprint of an army boot simply disappeared. Evidence gathered by police at the crime scene also disappeared after the detective concerned was involved in a traffic accident on the way from Quiche to Guatemala City.

Negatives of photographs taken during the autopsy also vanished. They were said to have been handed over to an army officer by the forensic expert. A ballistic test that the government ordered to be made in México and by the FBI was presented only months later. It is feared the ballistics tests may have been tampered with. One weapon believed used in the murder had its hammer and barrel changed.

Allegedly stolen items found in the possession of a gang of common bandits known as the "Churuneles" we reconfiscated by police, and later disappeared. They included weapons of a different caliber than those believed used in the murder.

The case file was misplaced for 10 days after the building in which it was believed to have been stored was set on fire. The file later showed up in another district.

After the arrested gang members spent 10 months in jail, a report by the Police Criminal Division blamed the murder on members of the civil patrol of San Pedro Jocopilas in Quiché province. The report said that they included a mayor and a former state governor, both members of the Christian Democratic Party.

Although the report was finished in September 1993, it wasn’t released until May 1994 and then only after the Diocesan Human Rights Office issued its own investigative report, charging that the murder was politically motivated and carried out by patrol members from San Pedro Jocopilas. This patrol has been accused of carrying out 55 murders.

The case then was turned over to a judge, who ordered the arrest of the suspects. Only superficial inquiries were made about the accused. Four of the ten suspects were arrested; another four turned themselves in. All were later released.

The Quiche police chief, Augusto Medina Mateo, the first person to investigate the Carpio murder, was murdered in October 1994 — two bullets in the back and one in the mouth. The first chief of the forces of civil security, he was in charge of the police unit in Quiche investigating the Carpio case. He had received several death threats after the first four civil defense patrol suspects were arrested. He was murdered just days after asking for a transfer to Guatemala City. Medina Mateo’s replacement was wounded in an attack and barely escaped with his life.

Attorney General Ramses Cuestas declared that the military were protecting the civil defense patrolmen involved in the Carpio case. He said that special prosecutor Abraham Méndez was threatened on trips to Quiche by individuals in vehicles belonging to the 20th Military Zone.

Nine public prosecutors have refused to handle the case. The district attorney now handling the case, who says he is doing so out of Christian conviction, fears for his life.

Meanwhile, a patrol member involved in the case have been murdered. Witnesses, attorneys and prosecutors have faced acts of intimidation and repeated threats. Evidence has been lost or tampered with, and the legal system has been maneuvered to prevent the admission of new evidence.

While the Carpio family seeks to exhaust every possible legal measure in Guatemala, the walls of impunity are still raised high. If they fail to obtain justice in Guatemala, they say they will go to the international courts to obtain at least a moral verdict.

CHRONOLOGY: JORGE CARPIO NICOLLE

May 25, 1993
President Jorge Serrano Elías attempts a self-coup.

June 1
Serrano flees into exile.

June 5
The National Congress appoints Ramiro de León Carpio interim president.

July 3
Jorge Carpio Nicolle and three members of his political entourage are assassinated in Quiché province.

July 5
Interior Minister Arnoldo Ortiz Moscoso declares that he will have the criminals arrested within 48 hours. That same day, President de Leon Carpio announces that two criminals have been arrested and that the Churuneles gang to which they belong are common criminals.

July 7
Army Intelligence G-2 Mario Enrique Gómez Ayala tells the press that the weapon that killed Carpio is the same that was used to kill Lt. Col. Juan José Furlan. Official statements suggest that the entire Churuneles band is responsible for the Carpio attack, but only four are charged with the crime.

July 13
A Carpio family press conference underscores irregularities in the investigation and rejects the unfolding official explanation of the crime.

July 15
As a result of an independent investigation by a private detective, the Carpio family concludes that the murder of Carpio is politically motivated.

Aug. 26
The government arrests civil defense patrolman Juan Acabal Patzán, who is charged with the murder of two persons in the town of Amatitlan. They confiscate a .45-caliber gun from him and say later that ballistics tests show the shells match those found at the scene of the Carpio murder.

Sept. 3
Former G-2 army intelligence member Cresencio Sam Batres declares in México City that members of the G-2 are responsible for the Carpio murder. The Guatemalan government does not comment or investigate.

Sept. 23
Police Criminal Investigation Division blames civil Defense patrols for the murder, but keeps the report secret.

Dec. 8:
The Interior minister goes to see Marta de Carpio. He contends that the weapon that killed Lt. Col. Furlan and Carpio were one and the same. He admits that Carpio’s was a "political assassination."

Jan. 19, 1994
The court archive at Santa Cruz de Quiche, where the Carpio case records are thought to be stored, burns down. But later it is discovered that the case files have been sent to Antigua and, thus, have not been destroyed by the fire.

January
The Diocesan Human Rights Office accuses the civilian patrols and military commissioners of being the material authors of Carpio’s death.

June 26
Francisco Acabal Ambrosio, one of the civil defense patrol suspects, is murdered.

Oct. 12
Commissioner of Civil Forces Augusto Medina Mateo is murdered. He was in charge of the Quiche police unit investigating the Carpio case. His replacement is wounded in an attack and barely escapes with his life.

November
Special prosecutor Méndez’automobile is riddled with bullets as he drives between Palin and Guatemala City. He escapes injury. The Carpio family continues to receive threats.

Dec. 5
The public phase of the trial begins.

June 1
Four of the 10 accused men are arrested. One of them, Pedro Chaperon Lajpop, member of the civil defense patrols and mayor of San Pedro Jocopilas, is freed on bail because as mayor he has immunity.

Sept. 19
The trial opens. The press learns that the president and high army officials have been called to testify. All give declarations.

Jan. 26, 1996
The acting judge rules that the case does not need to revert to a former stage of the process in which new evidence could be produced.

Jan. 30
Marta de Carpio and Karen Fischer appeal that decision.

Feb. 4
The Interior Ministry indicates it intends to withdraw the special security measures taken to protect Carpio family members.

Feb. 8
All political factions of the Congress sign a statement calling for prompt clarification of the Carpio case and protection for those involved in the investigation.