Almost 300,000 deaths: somebody will finally have to account for them. For the very first time in Guatemala’s history, three people will be tried for genocide, state terrorism and tortures for the facts that took place in the country during the bloody war that went on for 36 years (from 1960 to 1996).

The list. We’re talking about general Angel Guevara, minister for Defence during Romeno Lucas Garcia’s regime (1978 – 1982) when the Spanish embassy was assaulted, German Chupina who was the director general of police in the same period and Pedro Garcia Arredando who had to kill the opponents. And it doesn’t really matter if Oscar Humberto Mejia, minister for Defence during Lucas Garcia’s regime too, and the well-known head of state Rios Montt both managed to avoid the trial through bureaucratic pettifoggery: the prosecution started, taboos have fallen and even the ‘untouchables’ can’t feel safe anymore. It’s just a matter of time. The Spanish Audiencia Nacional, that has recently issued an international writ, will judge them.

Why a foreigner tribunal? This case deals with the murder of four missionaries, the kidnapping of another one and the Spanish embassy assault that was planned by the police on Jan. 31st in 1980, in which 37 people died. Three Spanish diplomats and Rigoberta Menchù, founder of the Nobel peace prize, where among the victims. In fact she was the one who denounced genocide crimes to Audiencia National in 1999. That’s how the preliminary investigations about those five priests started but the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal let the process go ahead only in 2005 and in June a Spanish judge could finally reach Guatemala, trying to speak to some witnesses and to match the pieces of a complex puzzle. Anyway the result was disappointing: all the soldiers that had been interrogated went to extremes to block any inquiry. But the judge from Madrid didn’t give up and he issued several international arrest warrants that became effective during this week.

A divided country. The game of the roles has actually underlined the deep Guatemalan society’s divisions. On one side humanitarian organizations and desaparecidos families’ organizations saw the end of the unpunished shame in the Spanish trial while on the other side reactionary power allied sectors defined the measure as an unacceptable foreign intervention, referring to the old cliché concerning the conqueror Spanish people, all evils’ cause.

Two excluded. Of course the arrest warrant also concerns Oscar Humberto Mejia and Rios Montt that is believed to be the main guilty. On the bases of the study “Guatemala nunca mas” carried out by the murdered bishop Juan Gerardi and the documentation “Guatemala, the silence’s memory” by UN, during the last 36 years, 69 percent of the executions took place when Montt was in power; 41 percent of rape cases, mainly suffered by native farmers; 45 percent of the tortures. Anyway, they both managed to avoid the trial through pettifoggery. So far.

“Not for long”. That’s what Rigoberta Menchù Tum Foundation and other non-governmental organizations whish. The two ‘untouchables’ claimed they weren’t in power when the embassy was assaulted and that’s why they haven’t been punished yet. But the Foundation explained that, as Audiencia National included the murder of two priests and the charge for genocide in the criminal investigation, all crimes committed during the so-called dirty war will be taken into account.