Explore sourced Guatemalan cases with legal outcomes stated precisely. The archive spans Plan de Sánchez, Molina Theissen, the Spanish Embassy attack, Dos Erres, Sepur Zarco, two assassinations and the María Isabel Véliz Franco case.
Cases appear here only when reliable records establish a conviction or equivalent adjudicated outcome. Remaining gaps are disclosed rather than hidden.
Maya Achi civilians were massacred at Plan de Sánchez in July 1982 during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict. The Inter-American Court established state responsibility, and five former civil-patrol members were convicted in 2012, while command accountability remained incomplete.
Open case file →Four former military officers were convicted in 2018 for crimes against Emma Molina Theissen; three were also convicted of the enforced disappearance of her 14-year-old brother, Marco Antonio, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
Open case file →Thirty-seven people died after security forces stormed Spain’s embassy in Guatemala City in January 1980. Former police commander Pedro García Arredondo was convicted 35 years later, while responsibility beyond the sole defendant remained incomplete.
Open case file →Fifteen-year-old María Isabel Véliz Franco disappeared in Guatemala in December 2001 and was found dead shortly afterward. After an Inter-American judgment exposed serious investigative failures, Gustavo Adolfo Bolaños Acevedo was convicted of her murder and sentenced to 30 years in 2021.
Open case file →Maya Q’eqchi’ women pursued Guatemala’s first national prosecution of wartime sexual slavery. Two former military figures were convicted of crimes against humanity in 2016 and received terms of 120 and 240 years.
Open case file →A Guatemalan Army special patrol killed more than 200 villagers at Dos Erres in December 1982. Decades later, several former soldiers were convicted, while international courts documented delayed and incomplete accountability.
Open case file →Bishop Juan José Gerardi was killed in Guatemala City on April 26, 1998, two days after presenting a landmark report on civil-war atrocities. Three military officers and a priest were convicted; later appeals reduced and ultimately upheld the surviving defendants’ sentences.
Open case file →
Anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang was killed outside her Guatemala City office in September 1990. A state security sergeant was convicted as a direct perpetrator, a senior officer was later convicted, and the Inter-American Court found Guatemala responsible while recording incomplete accountability.
Open case file →No separate Guatemala case currently meets the archive’s publication standard for this section. It remains empty rather than being populated with an unsupported or thin file.
Crime by Region distinguishes domestic criminal convictions from international state-responsibility judgments. It also separates an adjudicated core from unresolved questions: a conviction can support classification without implying that every participant was identified, arrested or punished.