Retired Guatemalan Colonel Juan Ovalle Salazar was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for his role in the massacre of 25 Indigenous people, mostly children, some 40 years ago during one of the most brutal periods of the country's conflict.
Eight other former members of the Central American country's military and civil defense were acquitted, said Judge Walter Mazariegos, as he handed out the sentence at a Guatemala City court.
The massacre of the 25 Maya Achi people—including 17 children—took place on July 29, 1982, at Rancho Bejuco, a mountain hamlet north of the capital.
It came during the 17-month rule of General Efrain Rios Montt, the bloodiest period of the 36-year civil war. Rios Montt was convicted of genocide in 2013, but this was later overturned by a higher court.
Prosecutors said Ovalle had ordered the massacre because some of the inhabitants of Rancho Bejuco had refused to join civil self-defense patrols created by the army at the time to control the population.
Bodies from the Rancho Bejuco massacre began to be exhumed in 1999 and the eight other defendants were arrested in February last year. Sixteen months later, the trial began.
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