Elimination of Witnesses

Sergeant Jose Obdulio Villanueva lost his life on February 12, 2003, in a disturbance that broke out in the Prison for Preventative Detention of Zone 18 of the capital of Guatemala Six more prisoners were murdered. Four of them, included Villanueva, were decapitated.

A sector of that prison was housing police and soldiers jailed for violations of Human Rights. One of them was Sergeant Villanueva and also two other members of the Presidential General Staff, who were condemned relating to the assassination of Monsignor Gerardi.

Furthermore, also there were the soldiers jailed for the extrajudicial execution in 1990 of the anthropologist Myrna Mack. Of the three members of the Military Information services of the Presidential General Staff condemned to thirty prison years in July of 2001 for planning the extrajudicial execution in 1998 of bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, sergeant Villanueva was of the least ranking.

In this regard, Amnesty International has declared: "We fear that the assassination of Villanueva was planned and that he may have been eliminated for being a possible leading witness against the two higher ranking officers presumably implicated in the assassination of the bishop, whose trial continues."

This fact emerged after the assassination of Noe Gomez Limon in December 2002, an important witness in the Gerardi case and brother of another witness whose testimony was considered essential in the convicting judgment handed down against Villanueva and his two superiors.

Gomez Limon is the tenth witness from the Gerardi case that has been murdered.

Furthermore, dozens of people related to the case claimed serious acts of intimidation against them. Another, a member of the Presidential General Staff who had implicated his colleagues in the assassination, fled from the country.

Also a judge and three attorneys related to the case fled from the country for fear of losing their life.