Home of Guatemalan Judge Bombed After Death Threats

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Wednesday March 21 10:36 PM ET (via yahoo)

Home of Judge in Guatemala Bishop Case Bombed

By Greg Brosnan

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Unidentified assailants on Wednesday bombed the
house of a judge slated to preside over the trial on Thursday of five
suspects in the killing of Guatemalan human rights advocate Bishop Juan
Gerardi in 1998.

"Thank God I'm alive," Judge Yasmin Barrios told Reuters minutes after
attackers threw two grenades into her home as she ate dinner with her mother
and sister.

The grenades, pitched over a fence onto her back porch, blew up a water tank
in the judge's home, blowing out all of the windows of her house.

"The Gerardi trial starts tomorrow, this is not a coincidence," said
Barrios, close to tears.

Police said they had no leads to speak of yet.

Barrios, one of three judges slated to begin hearing the case on Thursday,
has been threatened at least twice by unknown aggressors since she was
assigned the Gerardi case.

Last Friday, two, tall, shaven-headed men tried to break into her home in a
lower-middle class neighborhood in Guatemala City, prompting authorities to
post a three-man armed guard in front of her home on Tuesday to protect her
on the nights before the trial.

At least five people have abandoned the case of the murdered bishop in the
past year, including lawyers, prosecutors and witnesses.

Gerardi was found bludgeoned to death on April 26, 1998, in his Guatemala
City residence shortly after releasing a report blaming the military for
most of the 200,000 deaths during the country's 36-year civil war.

Four men and a woman have been accused of being involved in the gruesome
murder, including a maid and a Roman Catholic priest.

Three suspects who are to be tried on Thursday for the killing asked
Gerardi's successor in a letter on Wednesday to hear their confessions while
at the same time proclaiming their innocence.

Retired Army Col. Byron Lima Estrada, his son, Capt. Byron Lima Oliva and
former presidential bodyguard Jose Obdulio Villanueva and their lawyers
asked Bishop Mario Rios Mont -- who took charge of the Roman Catholic
church's human rights office after Gerardi's death -- to perform the
Catholic rite.

"By performing this blessed sacrament, we can open our hearts and souls to
him," said the suspects in a letter mailed to the bishop's office that also
proclaimed their innocence. A copy of the request was sent to Reuters on
Wednesday.

"I'm not the judge in the case," Rios Mont told a radio station in response
to the letter. "I don't know why they're asking me.

The bishop is brother to former Guatemalan dictator and current
congressional President retired Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. The two spell their
second surnames differently.
 
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