Former dictator convicted of genocide

GUATEMALA CITY (AP):Human-rights activists have claimed that former dictator Efrain Rios Montt's conviction of genocide is a historic moment in a country still healing from a brutal, three-decade civil war.

According to the human-rights activists, his trial offered Guatemala's oppressed indigenous communities their first chance to be heard.

Relatives of those killed and activists celebrated the 80-year sentence handed down by a tribunal to Rios Montt last Friday, a sweet moment in their long struggle to punish the former dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest chapters of a war that killed some 200,000 people, mainly indigenous Mayans.

During the trial Ixil Mayans, who have long suffered discrimination, stood up and testified about mass rapes, the killings of women and children, and other atrocities that authorities had often denied took place.

The ruling was the state's first official acknowledgement that genocide occurred during the 36-year civil war that ended with peace accords in 1996.

It was also the first time such a sentence for genocide was ever handed down against a former Latin American leader in his own country.