[JURIST] A Guatemalan court on Monday convicted a former police official for the killings of 37 people when the Spanish Embassy burned down during the country’s civil conflict in 1980. Pedro Garcia Arredondo, a former special investigations chief for the Sixth Commando of the National Police, was sentenced [NYT report] to 90 years in prison for the homicides, and crimes against humanity for ordering officers to keep anyone from leaving the embassy as it burned. On January 31, 1980, a group of farmers and students stormed the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City to bring awareness to the massacres during the country’s 36-year civil war. Police surrounded and sealed the facility. Arredondo had proclaimed his innocence. Amnesty International welcomed the verdict [press release] as a “victory for the victims.”

Earlier this month, the retrial of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt was delayed [JURIST report]. Montt is being tried for ordering military operations that led to the torture, rape and murder of 1,771 indigenous Ixil Mayans between 1982 and 1983, part of Guatemala’s bloody 1960-1983 Civil War [Global Security Backgrounder]. The war resulted in more than 200,000 deaths, mostly among Guatemala’s large indigenous Mayan population. According to a UN report [text, in Spanish] released in 1999, the military was responsible for 95 percent of those deaths. In May the Guatemalan Congress approved a resolution [JURIST report] denying any existence of genocide during the civil war. Rios Montt was previously protected [JURIST report] from prosecution because he was serving as a member of congress, an immunity that had been lifted due to his departure from the legislature. Rios Montt’s trial marks the first time a former head of state has been prosecuted for genocide in a national court, and the UN has praised [JURIST report] Guatemala’s efforts.