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MIKE AFRICA JR. I've been livin' in a prison for 38 years
because my mother and father are both in prison.
REPORTER: Four minutes of gunfire,
one policeman killed, and members of group MOVE
have been routed from their house.
So, this would have been her cell?
MAN: Yeah.
AFRICA: The MOVE organization experienced so much hate
and anger from the system.
What can I do about that except just keep on pushin'?
♪ Every time I fight, the reason I fight is to not fight again ♪
(DISTANT GUNFIRE)
(GUNFIRE CONTINUES)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(GUNFIRE)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(CROWD CLAPPING)
♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪
(PHONE RINGING)
RONALTH OCHAETA:
(SIREN BLARING)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
OCHAETA:
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(SNIFFLES)
(BELL RINGING)
♪ (MUSIC INCREASES) ♪
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN: Bishop Gerardi was the parish priest
at the church of San Sebastián
in an old historic center of Guatemala City.
It's location is super interesting
because it's only blocks from the, uh, National Palace,
uh, the Presidential... you know, offices.
Uh, the... It's inside
what they call the security perimeter.
It's also only a few blocks away from the cathedral,
where the offices of the archdiocese,
office of human rights were located.
San Sebastián is a, uh...
old-fashioned neighborhood parish.
He shared his duties there with another priest,
Father Mario Orantes.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
Why would they kill someone as eminent as Bishop Gerardi?
A 78-year-old bishop,
two days after he's released this human rights report
that has captured the world's attention.
Given Guatemala's history, everyone's going to assume
it was the army that did it.
That's gonna be... that's what I first thought
when I first heard it.
You know, everybody was gonna react that way.
This is a country that had just come out of
more than 35 years of war. It signed peace accords.
And so for him to be murdered in the way he was,
a lot of people really felt that it was gonna restart the war.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
♪ (GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(BELLS RINGING)
(CAMERAS CLICKING)
JOAN LEISHMAN: Church and human rights leaders fear the Bishop's murder
could jeopardize the work they've been doing
to uncover Guatemala's savage past.
That victims may now be too scared to come forward
with their stories.
Too scared to fight to prosecute the perpetrators of the crimes.
Because they say, "If a bishop who was searching for the truth
can be murdered, then no one is safe."
Joan Leishman, CBC News, Guatemala City.
(BELLS RINGING)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
CLAUDIA MÉNDEZ ARRIAZA: You will read the papers,
you know, see the TV news shows,
and see a lot of voices claiming for justice.
The murderers cannot get away with this murder.
This murder happened inside the security circle
of Álvaro Arzú.
I mean, it happened two blocks away
from the presidential house
of the most powerful man in Guatemala.
So, you know, the intelligence services must know something.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
Whether out of incompetence, panic,
uh, some devious design,
uh, the crime scene was very seriously mishandled.
If you were going to make video to show
future forensics people how not to handle a crime scene,
I guess you could show them a video of what happened there
that night.
They did everything wrong.
When they did finally get around to putting up
yellow security tape, it was way too small
and protected too little space and it was just--
People were allowed to just come in
and literally tramp blood all over the place.
'Cause imagine what a bloody crime scene it was
and anyone that came into the garage
and walked anywhere else in the house was gonna be
tramping blood around.
So the crime scene itself, in terms of
the kind of forensics you expect were gone.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
The first thing and the first hypothesis
that you're tempted to think of is it's political.
But as an investigator, you have to try and--
you really have to try hard to remove that
from your thought process
and you have to go through the evidence
and you have to follow the evidence.
So in those first days, as we were all sad,
we were all shocked,
but on those first days of the investigation,
we talked a lot about being objective
and to follow the evidence and to follow the leads.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(DOG BARKING)
RUBÉN CHANAX: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
FERNANDO PENADOS:
(DISTANT SIREN BLARING)
Monsignor Gerardi was killed on a Sunday.
Monday, some, um, media outlets already had theories
of what happened.
ARTURO AGUILÁR: Theory about this being a crime of passion.
RODRIGO SALVADO: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
People got confused, and they're confused even today.
I mean, just go out...
to any Guatemalan in the street
and ask, "Who killed the bishop?"
I mean, they are confused. They can't say, like,
"Oh, it was in a homosexual thing.
There were things going on inside the church."
Or, "It was a gang."
I mean, they don't have an idea of, you know,
what was the real cause.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(SIGHS)
♪ (FUNERAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(BELL RINGING)
(CROWD CLAPPING)
OCHAETA: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
(SIGHS, SNIFFS)
(SNIFFLES)
♪ (FUNERAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ATTENDEE:
(CROWD CLAPPING)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
GOLDMAN: I think Bishop Gerardi always represented justice to people.
in a country where there was no justice.
I think he represented a figure of authority and power
who would listen to people
in a country where nobody who had authority and power
would listen to anybody.
And when the archbishop's office of human rights,
ODHA, gets established in 1989, which is to say,
through all those long years of the war,
Guatemala had basically been without
consequential human rights groups.
Whenever one would form,
either their leaders would be murdered,
or chased into exile.
Uh, why was this different?
Because it was the church.
The army can't move against the church,
and the church has incredible reach throughout the country
through all its parishes, through all its churches,
through all its people who work for the church.
It has trust in all the communities, basically.
And because of that, this human rights group
is capable of doing what no other group
had ever been able to do, which is sort of gather
information from everywhere.
EDGAR GUTIERREZ: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
OCHAETA:
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GOLDMAN: REMHI was the first
really ambitious full accounting
of the human rights violations of the war
that anybody had attempted.
The army and the powers that be in this country
never thought it could amount to what it amounted to,
never foresaw such a thorough undertaking.
In the end, it was a four-volume report.
They identified specifically, you know,
something like 435 massacres.
The final volume lists by name 50,000 of the war dead.
It had extraordinary volumes dedicated to unprecedented
investigation and analysis
of how various military units had operated.
The conclusions of the report
were that the military committed
far and away the vast majority of atrocities in the war.
The report had made it seem
that this terrible reign of silence and terror
could finally be broken.
Let the truth be known, which is incredibly liberating.
GUATEMALA: NEVER AGAIN
WE CONDEMN THE MURDER OF MONSIGNOR JUAN GERARDI
Bishop Gerardi spoke publicly
about the importance of having that hope
and the importance of at least creating some conditions.
by which justice could be achieved.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(TIRES SCREECHING)
REPORTER:
(TALKING IN ENGLISH)
they had a fight, and the other man kills Gerardi.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
The prosecutor's office thought that Father Mario
had, um, sort of a relationship with Monsignor Gerardi,
and that because of that relationship
they had gotten into an argument, into a dispute,
and it escalated all the way up
as for Mario Orantes, Father Mario, to sic his dog
on Monsignor Gerardi.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
GOLDMAN: Balú's arrest really did turn
this incredibly grave murder
into a carnival, into an incredible show.
People were just fascinated by Balú.
Rather than talking about the REMHI report,
people were... talking and speculating about
the sex lives of the church.
Priests and gay crimes of passion
and dogs and everything else.
Well, the story took off because it had all the...
the elements you need to entertain.
You have full entertainment.
GOLDMAN: Otto Ardón needed proof.
He took this to Spain.
To Spain's most revered forensic anthropologist...
Dr. Jose Reverte Coma.
OTTO ARDÓN: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
Ardón ordered a second autopsy to resolve the question
of whether they were dog bites or not.
Because this was so controversial,
Jose Reverte Coma himself, the great eminence,
was going to come and conduct the autopsy
and draw his own conclusions to confirm his findings.
Ardón certainly seemed convinced
of the truth of those accusations.
(HAMMERING)
MÉNDEZ ARRIAZA: (TALKING IN ENGLISH)
You could hear people saying, "Let this man rest in peace."
It was unbelievable. It was a shock
to hear that he had to be unburied
to find out if he was bitten by a dog.
(BELLS RINGING)
NEVER AGAIN
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (CROWD SINGING INDISTINCTLY) ♪
(CROWD CLAPPING)
CROWD MEMBER: (SHOUTING IN SPANISH)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC INCREASES) ♪
GOLDMAN: The church needed an internationally prestigious
counterweight to Dr. Jose Reverte Coma.
They needed experts
that you couldn't get in Guatemala.
They needed real experts, gente de peso, you know?
People whose names would mean something
and even raise eyebrows.
JACK PALLADINO: I was contacted by Amnesty International
and the Catholic Church.
Rather different than my usual clients.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
PALLADINO: We were in this cavernous space
and there are 50, 60, 70 people, coming in, going out.
And over it all is this Spanish character.
Coma was his name.
He had a really imperial presence
and fully anticipated he would be always the final authority.
And one of the first things he does
is he decides to remove the fungus
that is covering his face
by scraping it away with a scalpel, causing abrasions
on the very skin that you want to examine,
destroying the possibility, already difficult
given the deterioration of the body,
of picking up serious forensic evidence off of it.
The dog has a canine,
and it's the reason we call these canine teeth.
The dog has long canines and small incisors,
much more differentiated than a person.
So if, in fact, the four little marks over, uh,
the Bishop's left eye
are made by a dog bite,
then... and the incisor is a part of that,
then the canines would have to penetrate through the skin,
and penetrate into the skull.
The skin is peeled back and there are no marks at all
on the skull,
which means it could not physically be a dog bite.
You could not have the marks on the skin
without penetration through the skull.
At the end of the second autopsy,
it was clear that it had not been dog bites,
and I think that Ardón at that point
knew there was no way you could take this to trial.
He had lost all credibility.
He knew it.
And he had no other option left other than to resign,
which he did.
The bottom line here is that...
the real murderer,
the real attack has nothing to do with a dog,
and is still out there and the government has basically
come up with a theory that keeps them
from having to look for them.
-(DISTANT SIREN BLARING) -(DOG BARKING)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
People had reason to be suspicious of Father Mario
early on, in part because of something
that the homeless witness Rubén Chanax had said.
RUBÉN CHANAX: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
MÉNDEZ ARRIAZA: (TALKING IN ENGLISH)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
We investigated the background of Father Mario.
We found a lot of information about his connections
and his connections to the elite.
To me, one of the most striking things, for example,
having grown up here, and having partly grown up here,
and having been around, and having been here
all through the '80's, and being really...
known way, um, right wing upper class Guatemalans...
express things, and what they mean to say,
so when a week after the murder, Father Mario says,
the reason Bishop Gerardi was killed
was he was a jefe de todos los guerrilleros.
He was the chief of all the guerrillas.
That is... I can hear, like,
my most right-wing aunt saying that.
That's exactly the kind of thing they say.
(TALKING IN ENGLISH)
You know...
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SALVADO: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
He told us then the story about how he was assigned
to Monsignor Gerardi's case, file 27.
And how he, um, kept the records,
cassettes at that time,
and how other members of the intelligence community
fed him information and pictures and reports,
and he kept all the files together.
SALVADO: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
Monsignor Gerardi was seen as an enemy of the state.
(TALKING IN ENGLISH)
but way before.
OCHAETA: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
OCHAETA:
GUTIERREZ:
OCHAETA:
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MYNOR MELGAR: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
(PHONE RINGING)
MALE CALLER:
(CROWD CLAPPING)
HISTORIC CLARIFICATION COMMISSION
GUATEMALA, REMEMBERING THE SILENCE
MALE ANNOUNCER: (INDISTINCT TALKING IN SPANISH)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(CROWD CLAPPING)
Now, you can declare an amnesty as the Guatemalans did,
for prosecutions for war crimes,
but you cannot declare an amnesty
for a crime against humanity like genocide.
So, essentially that undid the amnesty.
But it didn't undo the fear of trying to prosecute
military officers for war crimes.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(PHONE RINGING)
(DOORBELL BUZZES)
OCHAETA:
(INHALES)
People were afraid again.
Like when Monsignor was killed. If they can kill Monsignor,
they can kill anyone.
If they can do this to Ronalth Ochaeta,
they can do it to anyone.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
And I confirmed that he's a great investigator,
has an acute mind, and he's very great with details
and he's really great connecting dots.
LEOPOLDO ZEISSIG: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
GOLDMAN: Rubén Chanax, the homeless witness,
is sort of the forgotten person in this case up to this point.
He has been for the longest time now,
in a kind of protective custody
of the police, sitting in these kind of pensiones,
these sort of hotel flop houses in the center.
Strangely forgotten, but yet they're keeping him.
And probably they were getting ready to let him go,
I would guess,
when Zeissig gets the case, and Zeissig makes the decision
that turns the Gerardi case around really,
and says, "Let's go take another look at this witness."
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
Cases like this don't rely on a single piece of evidence
or on a single testimony.
Cases like this are complex cases.
So they rely on the integration of information of several,
many, many pieces of evidence.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
In the early days of the investigation, a tip came
and it was naming the Lima family
as-- as one, um...
as people that we should look into.
It just was afterwards when...
several other pieces of information
led up to that name.
-(DISTANT SIREN BLARING) -(PANTING)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
FERNANDO PENADOS: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
SALVADO:
(BRAKES SCREECHING)
RUBÉN CHANAX:
♪ (MUSIC INCREASES) ♪
RUBÉN CHANAX:
(DOORBELL RINGS)
(FOOTSTEPS RECEDING)
JORGE MANUEL AGUILAR MARTÍNEZ,
A MILITARY EX-SPECIALIST OF THE PRESIDENTIAL GUARD...
SALVADO:
(TALKING IN ENGLISH)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(INAUDIBLE)
MÉNDEZ ARRIAZA: (TALKING IN ENGLISH)
The suspicion on Father Mario has always been that he was...
the person inside the parish house,
who opened the door to the man who killed Gerardi.
(DOG BARKING)
GOLDMAN: Colonel Byron Lima Estrada
was one of the most notorious figures of the war.
He was your classic, um...
gung-ho, uh, insanely anti-communist,
extreme right wing,
very vocal military commander.
But he had also been head of G2 military intelligence
at a time when they were committing
some horrible human rights crimes.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
GOLDMAN: And his son, Captain Byron Lima Oliva,
was a member of the EMP,
the President's bodyguards and that intelligence unit.
(TALKING IN ENGLISH)
Which is the most feared unit
of not only the Guatemalan army but in Latin America.
Sergeant Obdulio Villanueva, he's working in the same unit
than Captain Lima.
Even though he's a low-rank member of that unit,
he's always next to Captain Lima.
Like his right hand.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
ANOTHER MILITARY MAN CAPTURED
OBDULIO VILLANUEVA EX-SPECIALIST TO THE EMP
LINKED TO THE ASSASSINATION OF GERARDI BY THE POLICE
(SIGHS)
There were meetings and... and discussions
about how to keep everybody...
or try to keep everybody safe.
As soon as that witnesses have given their declaration
to the judge, at which point, you know,
it becomes known that they've become witnesses,
they have to get out of the country.
They have to get them out.
The threat just felt so real.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
YASSMÍN BARRIOS:
BYRON LIMA OLIVO:
BARRIOS:
ZEISSIG:
No, uh, Guatemalan military officers
had ever, um, been found guilty of participation
in a state sponsored execution.
I believe Captain Lima thought that he was going to be
out of prison before getting into a trial.
I believe Captain Lima was sure that he was not going to step
in the courtroom and face a trial
for the Gerardi case.
And so this was the huge test of which...
it was the Guatemalan justice system ready to affirm
the most basic, democratic values.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(CLEARS THROAT)
When Captain Lima was talking about his case,
by March 2001,
you had to have in mind is, the trial was about to begin.
It was two or three weeks before the trial begun,
that we had the interview.
So, he was not sounding really, really sure or confident...
THE CAPTAIN IS LEFT ALONE
...about getting away with it, as he sounded before.
I was very aware by that time that...
he used reporters to spread his propaganda.
And we were the perfect means to spread his threats,
to spread his intimidations,
to spread his, you know, subliminal messages.
I was totally aware of that, and...
(TALKING IN ENGLISH)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
People doubted, they said, "No, you're not gonna be able,
and Public Ministry is not gonna be able to convict
this military person. They're too powerful."
-(EXPLOSION) -(GLASS BREAKING)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
I really thought that she was going to excuse herself
from the trial. Come on, a bomb
just exploded at her house.
And I thought, like, I mean, it's your life or the trial.
♪ (VIOLIN MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MÉNDEZ ARRIAZA: Then I looked at her and I thought,
"Oh, my gosh, she's really brave."
She didn't excuse herself.
Standing so quiet and so, you know, firm.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
I think almost every reporter missed a lot
of the most important testimony.
They never heard it because it was boring.
Because it would happen during the slow hours of the trial,
when-- because so many of the important witnesses
were in exile,
were in prison, or missing, or...
so a lot of the most important testimony
was read out loud into the court.
This was the taxi driver's testimony.
This was Aguilar Martinez's testimony.
Right? I think was Oscar Chex's testimony.
A lot of the key witnesses, they weren't there.
No. So, these people never heard it,
because I think I only knew one reporter
who was nerdy enough
to sit there and listen to every word of it
and take notes.
And that was Claudia Méndez.
It was a dangerous time, and you can feel it.
You know the air was so thick in the trial,
in the courtroom with the judges,
with the witnesses, with the prosecutors,
with the defense attorneys.
The air was so heavy and thick that you could feel it.
GOLDMAN: People had no idea of what was coming.
People had no idea that ODHA and that prosecutor's case
was really that strong or not.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
♪ (VIOLIN MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ZEISSIG: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
CHANAX:
They thought he would be afraid,
uh, they thought he'd be easy to intimidate.
Um, they thought he'd be easy to confuse.
You know? And they thought they could just show him up.
And, uh, (LAUGHS) nobody was prepared for what happened.
It was extraordinary.
CHANAX: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
Chanax did not change his testimony.
He augmented it.
Right? He always... it was like,
first was like the basic narrative,
and the basic narrative never changed.
And he would just always add more and add more
and add more.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
GOLDMAN: And one reason he had to do that
was because Guatemala did not have
a protected witness program.
Right? If he said anything that implicated himself
in the crime, he could be arrested right there.
And I think the defense thought that might happen.
That was one of the things-- ways they'd hoped to trick him.
Right? But he was too careful.
He's so wily, he's such a survivor.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MALE COURT MEMBER:
GOLDMAN: Nobody doubted that Father Mario
had some involvement.
Was it just unlocking the door to the sacristy?
Or was it much more sinister?
I think to this day, some of those questions
are still hanging over the case.
But that he was involved? Um, without a doubt.
No, had he been blackmailed into doing something,
or did he actively take part?
In the build-up of the verdict, we were all waiting
at the courthouse. It took many hours.
(TALKING IN SPANISH)
You could cut the tension with a steak knife.
It was crazy.
The hours passed, the hours passed,
and then it just came the time.
FEMALE COURT SECRETARY: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
MALE COURT MEMBER:
FEMALE COURT SECRETARY:
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(CLEARS THROAT)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MÉNDEZ ARRIAZA: (TALKING IN ENGLISH)
is when she reads that the crime was political.
It was a straight crime. That's the conclusion,
which means they were not convicted only, you know,
by the charges of assassination, but they were convicted
by being state members
and using all the state means, not only to commit the crime
but to cover the crime.
Um, proving to society that justice can be served
no matter who the defendant is,
and giving that hope and just breaking a little brick
of that impunity wall that has done so much damage
to the Guatemalan society.
GOLDMAN: Guatemalans recognize that the place to draw the line
to protect Guatemala from becoming
the completely failed state, the narco state,
was by protecting the justice system.
And that's why we've seen so many
of the, uh, extraordinary things
that came out of the Gerardi case
a strengthened, idealistic, ennobled justice department
has pulled off some incredible things in Guatemala.
That there are people here ready to-- you know,
willing to wage these kinds of fights and to win them.
They don't always, you know, and especially now.
We're heading into some really dark times.
GERARDI LIVES
GOLDMAN: All of that is Bishop Gerardi's legacy,
and it's why you still see his poster everywhere,
and his spirit's behind the way Guatemalans are living now.
OCHAETA: (TALKING IN SPANISH)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GERARDI LIVES!