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Guatemala begins eliminating infamous guard

Sunday, December 29, 2002 Posted: 9:25 PM EST (0225 GMT)


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GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Guatemala's government has reduced the country's presidential guard by 25 percent, taking the first step toward abolishing the infamous security group, the president said Sunday.

In a speech marking the sixth anniversary since peace accords were signed on December 29, 1996, President Alfonso Portillo said the government planned to slowly eliminate the guard, cutting a similar amount of jobs in March.

The group was originally created to protect the president but allegedly grew into a squad of spies and assassins responsible for some of Guatemala's most high-profile atrocities.

Portillo promised during his electoral campaign in 1999 to get rid of the guard, at the recommendation of a U.N. commission assigned to oversee the peace accords.

Yet earlier attempts at abolishing the group have been thwarted by arguments that the government lacks the money to pay severance pay and other benefits to those who would be left unemployed.

Up to half of the 162 jobs recently eliminated from the guard will be reassigned to a new department created solely to protect the president and vice president. The new department will be separate from the army -- unlike the old presidential guard.

Other former employees will retire, and some will receive severance pay and other benefits.

Prosecutors say corrupt army generals and presidents long used the guard and its slayings to protect their secrets during the country's 1960-96 civil war.

This year, a Guatemalan army colonel was sentenced to 30 years in prison for ordering a fellow member of the guard to kill human rights activist Myrna Mack in 1990.

And last year, two guard members were convicted of murdering Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi, the head of the church's local human rights office. Gerardi was killed after releasing a report blaming the military for human rights abuses. Two other men also were convicted.



Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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