Guatemala City, May 5 (RHC-teleSUR)-- A Guatemalan court has suspended a trial against former dictator Efrain Rios Montt after ruling in favor of an appeal to have him tried separately from his former intelligence chief.

Rios Montt is accused of murdering 1,771 indigenous Ixil-Maya people, from 1982 to 1983, during the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996.  He was actually convicted of genocide for the charges in May 2013 and sentenced to 80 years in prison, but the historic verdict was overturned 10 days later, while the pursuit to retry him has been met by a string of delays.

Montt, who is now 89 years old, has been on trial since March.  His attorney say he suffers from dementia and is too ill to attend the hearings.  Officials haven’t announced a retrial date.

Guatemala's bloody conflict killed over 200,000, mostly Indigenous Guatemalans, while tens of thousands were tortured or disappeared.