Guatemala City, November 18 (RHC)-- The former dictator of Guatemala Jose Efrain Rios Montt will face genocide charges for a 1982 massacre that killed 273 Indigenous people and campesinos, almost half of them minors. 

In Guatemala City, a judge said that Rios Montt, who ruled from 1982 to 1983, will be represented by his lawyers since he was ruled mentally unfit for trial, at 90 years old. 

Four members of the army’s elite troop, which executed the massacre, were already condemned to over 6,000 years in prison five years ago.  One lieutenant was sentenced to over 5,000 years and two others accused of participating in the massacre are detained in the United States, where they are serving a sentence for lying to obtain U.S. citizenship. 

Rios Montt is currently under house arrest and was scheduled to face trial for the killing of 1,071 Ixil Indigenous people during his de facto regime, but he was suspended from trial due to health reasons. 

The former despot, who was a “School of the Americas” graduate and an alleged CIA asset, carried out the bloodiest period of Guatemala’s over three-decade-old civil war.