Testimony implicates military in bishops
murder
By PAUL JEFFREY
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Guatemala
City
The trial of five people accused of killing Guatemalan Bishop Juan
Gerardi Conedera took a dramatic turn April 30 when Rubén Chanax Sontay
testified that after months of spying on the bishop on behalf of the army, he
was forced by two of the defendants to help move Gerardis cadaver and
clean up the scene of the murder.
Chanaxs telling of events in the San Sebastian parish house
had been presented to the court in writing shortly after the trial began in
March. For his own protection, Chanax, who lives outside the country under a
witness protection program, was not expected to appear at the trial. Yet
defense attorneys demanded an opportunity to cross-examine him, so prosecutors
flew him back. Appearing in court wearing a bulletproof vest and guarded by
five armed police officers, Chanax went into a lot more detail this time about
what happened on April 26, 1998, when Gerardi was bludgeoned to death.
His testimony left defense attorneys sorry theyd demanded
his appearance.
Chanax said one of the defendants, retired Col. Disrael Lima
Estrada, had employed him for the previous two years to spy on Gerardi,
reporting to the Presidential Guard on Gerardis movements and visitors.
Chanax filed his reports every Saturday, for which he was paid $40 a week. To
watch the bishop, Chanax pretended to be a bum and hung out in the park in
front of Gerardis residence.
The colonel told me that the vigilance of the bishop was
called Operación Pajaro [Operation Bird], Chanax testified. He
said that Captain Byron Lima Oliva and Sergeant Jose Villanueva -- charged
along with three others in the Gerardi killing -- approached him the morning of
the murder and instructed him to take the day off. He felt obliged to remain at
his post, however, and that night about 10 p.m. he witnessed the two, dressed
all in black, arrive at the residence shortly after a man without a shirt ran
out of the house. Chanax said Oliva and Villanueva soon called him into the
garage, where Gerardis body lay in a pool of blood.
Lima [Oliva] told me, You son of a whore, come and
help us. They gave me a pair of gloves, like those that doctors use, and
then we moved the body. While we did this, Villanueva was filming the
scene, Chanax said. He said the officers then told him to fetch some
toilet paper and clean up bloody footprints that led into the house. Chanax
testified that before departing, Lima Oliva and Villanueva threatened that if
he told anyone what hed seen that the same thing would happen to him as
had happened to Gerardi.
Chanax also testified that shortly before these events he had seen
Lima Estrada in a neighborhood store across the street. The witness said that
after the military officers left the scene, he realized that one of the church
doors had been left open. He rang the bell at another door until Fr. Mario
Orantes, also accused of murdering Gerardi, answered. When Chanax told Orantes
that the other door was open, the priest kicked it closed.
The fifth defendant is Margarita López, the parish
housekeeper, who is accused of helping to cover up evidence of the crime
because early the following morning she washed the garage where Gerardis
was found.
The defense attorneys were visibly upset by Chanaxs
testimony and tried to repudiate it. Hes lying, the prosecutor has
trained him how to lie. Its evident that hes inventing
everything, said Villanuevas attorney, Roberto Echeverria, who
demanded that Chanax be subjected to a lie detector test. Nery Rodenas, an
attorney for the archdiocesan human rights office, an official participant in
the trial, said Chanax had fared well in a lie detector test administered in
1999.
As Chanax again left the country, the court also heard the
testimony of Carlos Chex, a military specialist whose job was to transcribe
tape recordings of telephone conversations of Gerardi and other high church
leaders.
They had a wide net of control cast over the bishops and
us, said Rodenas. This increased when we began to work on
Guatemala, Never Again, the report on war atrocities that Gerardi
released two days before his death.
Chanax isnt the first witness called by the defense whose
testimony has helped the prosecution. Gilberto Gómez Limón
testified on April 26, called by Villanueva to dispute the prosecutions
allegation that Villanueva, in prison at the time of the killing, regularly
left the prison. Gómez Limón, also an inmate at the time,
surprisingly agreed with prosecutors and told the court that Villanueva had
special comforts inside the prison, and that whoever had
money could pay 300 or 400 quetzales [$40 or $50] and leave for a while.
Gómez Limón, who also appeared wearing a bulletproof vest,
further embarrassed the defense when, under cross-examination from prosecutors,
he claimed that Echeverria had offered him 100,000 quetzales (about $13,000) to
change his story.
Orantes defense suffered a setback on April 26 when Ronalth
Ochaeta, the director of the church rights office at the time of the murder,
testified that Orantes was freshly bathed, well-dressed, and serene
at the crime scene, while others were weeping openly. Ochaeta said
Orantes recounting of the night was full of contradictions,
and that the priest refused to cooperate with church lawyers
looking into the killing, instead hiring an attorney linked to the military.
Ochaeta, who is now the Guatemalan ambassador to the Organization of American
States, refused to apologize for a public comparison he made between Orantes
and Judas.
Ochaeta was with the murdered bishop until less than two hours
before he was killed. He recounted for the court how Gerardi was excited about
several new projects he had planned in the wake of the historical report,
including an acceleration of exhumations of massacre sites and the opening of
legal suits against several of the officials responsible for the massacres.
And he was most concerned about my safety, and that of Edgar
Gutierrez, another church rights activist, Ochaeta told the court.
He wanted us to leave the country for a while for our own good. He said
the country had enough martyrs already.
In a memorial Mass concelebrated by 80 priests and 14 bishops on
the three-year anniversary of the bishops killing, Bishop Alvaro
Ramazzini of San Marcos, Guatemala, declared that Gerardi was a grain of
wheat that dies in order to give life. His death, joined to the death of our
Lord, becomes a seed of hope, peace and justice for Guatemala.
Speaking before some 5,000 people crowded into the Metropolitan
Cathedral, Ramazzini recalled that the military had previously tried twice to
kill Gerardi.
If the church doesnt suffer persecution, if it
isnt criticized, if it isnt in danger of death, then it is not
being faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Ramazzini said.
National Catholic Reporter, May 18,
2001
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