Survivors of the Ixil ethnic group remember some of the victims of the genocide during the armed conflict in Guatemala. | Photo: EFE

Guatemala City, September 1 (RHC)-- A Guatemalan court has decided to try two retired Army generals for the genocide of more than 1,700 indigenous people during the armed conflict in the Central American country.

Generals Benedicto Lucas and Manuel Callejas were sent to trial by decision of Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez for the genocide of the Ixil community and crimes of duties against humanity. 

Since March 2020, the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) requested Judge Gálvez to send Benedicto Lucas García, Manuel Callejas and César Noguera Argueta (now deceased) to trial.  The three former generals were accused in the genocide case of more than 1,700 indigenous Ixiles in the north of the country during the government of Romeo Lucas García.

"We celebrate today the justice, late, but it approaches the horizon of the memory and fight for the dignity of the victims," said in a press release the Human Rights Office of the Archbishopric of Guatemala (Odhag), one of the plaintiffs in the case.

The Odhag recalled that at least 200 testimonies and 148 forensic anthropology reports were presented to validate the accusation against Lucas and Callejas for genocide.

Both former generals are in prison, sentenced to 30 years in prison for the forced disappearance of a young boy, Marco Antonio Molina Theissen, in 1981.