Former Guatemala president Oscar Mejia Victores has been declared a “fugitive from justice,” a day after an arrest warrant was issued for the civil war-era leader on charges of genocide and war crimes.
The 80-year-old general ruled Guatemala from 1983-85 after gaining power through a coup, during a period of bloody unrest in the Central American country.
Prosecutors had also issued two other warrants for officials during that era, and arrested one of them, the former military intelligence chief Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez.
The other individual, identified only as Mendoza Garcia, remains at large.
Following raids Wednesday on four of Mejia’s properties, he was declared a “fugitive from justice,” prosecution spokeswoman Yessenia Enriquez told AFP.
In a landmark move earlier this year, retired general Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, a former military chief of staff in the early 1980s, before Mejia’s rule, was arrested, accused of genocide and forced disappearance, and remains in prison on charges of directing military attacks against civilians.
Guatemala’s brutal 1960-1996 civil war left some 200,000 dead or missing, according to United Nations estimates.
