Byron Disrael Lima Estrada

The main suspect in the assassination of Juan Jose Gerardi was Colonel Byron Lima Estrada. Declassified records from the U.S. State Department revealed him as an “official of conservative and anti-democratic intelligence services, employed in maintaining the power of the Army despite the transition that began in the 1980s.”

By 1968, he was a prominent military official in the counterinsurgent struggle, after graduating from studies in intelligence, counterintelligence and espionage in the School of the Americas in Panama and in at least eight other countries including the Chilean police force.

Lima Estrada directed almost all the intelligence organizations in Guatemala and stood out for his work as a counterinsurgent officer and founder of an elite kamikaze unit. Decorated on multiple occasions, he is known as “the crazy Lima.” He was demoted after participating in a failed coup d’état against President Vinicio Cerezo in 1989, after which he became military attaché in Nicaragua and Peru. In 1991, he returned to Guatemala, where he retired.

The Court concluded that Lima Estrada had motives for planning the assassination of Gerardi because the ODHA had accused him as being a rapist.