Supporters of ex-Guatemala dictator Rios Montt protest outside prison over genocide verdict

By Staff The Associated Press

Posted May 12, 2013 6:56 pm

Updated May 13, 2013 8:18 am

1 min read

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Supporters of former Guatemalan de facto President (1982-1983), retired General Jose Efrain Rios Montt, sing the national anthem during a protest against the latter's prosecution, outside a military prison at Matamoros in Guatemala City on May 12, 2013. Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and war crimes on May 10 and sentenced to 80 years in prison in a landmark ruling stemming from massacres of indigenous people in his country's long civil war. Rios Montt thus became the first Latin American convicted of trying to exterminate an entire group of people in a brief but particularly gruesome stretch of a war that started in 1960, lasted 36 years and left around 200,000 people dead or missing. JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP/Getty Images

GUATEMALA CITY – At least 500 people have protested outside a Guatemala prison against the genocide conviction for former dictator Efrain Rios Montt.

Supporters dressed in white and military garb shouted “Viva Rios Montt” on Sunday outside the Matamoros prison. That’s where the ex-strongman was taken after he received a landmark 80-year sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity.

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Demonstrators say the judicial process was corrupt and are demanding a higher court nullify the verdict. Protesters say prosecutors couldn’t prove the state had a motive to kill 1,771 Maya.

A tribunal ruled Friday that Rios Montt knew about the killings and didn’t stop the slaughter between 1982 and 1983, the height of Guatemala’s brutal civil war.

It was the first genocide conviction given to a former Latin American ruler in his own country.

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