Indigenous groups have rejected UN forest plan as attempt to colonise them, as tensions over land management grow

A few years ago, Mario Degaiza worked in construction in Panama City, where he learned Spanish and, for a while, was excited by the hustle and the bustle of urban life. But the 36-year-old Embera Indian says he is far happier now he has returned to his home village of Marraganti and the tropical forest that surrounds it.

"The forest is our mother," he says while tucking into a bowl of rice and fried plantains in a traditional one-room and wall-free house built on stilts to keep floods and snakes at bay. "But it is still beautiful, it is ours and we have to look after it because without it we are nothing."

Marraganti nestles beside a river within the most impenetrable part of Panama's jungle-covered Darien province that borders Colombia and is the only part of the Americas without a stretch of the Pan-American highway. Darien is now getting a reputation as a quagmire for the UN's climate change amelioration scheme Redd+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation).

The national co-ordinating body of Panama's seven indigenous groups, known as Coonapip, this year withdrew from negotiations on how to apply the scheme in Panama. The groups allege that the emerging plan was turning into an underhand effort to weaken indigenous control over their land and chip away at resistance to potential exploitation of resources, from wood to oil.

"We thought Redd was going to help us strengthen our rights over our territories because no one looks after the forests like we do," says Coonapip leader Betanio Chiquidama, who on Friday will outline the reason for the withdrawal at an event in New York to coincide with the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. "It sought to do the opposite and we have lost all trust in the UN."

Gabriel Labbate, the UN's regional co-ordinator of Redd+, says he believes Coonapip's withdrawal had more to do with demands for more money and internal indigenous politics over who controlled which projects. But he is wary of reducing the problem to competition over international resources. "It fits into the more complex context of the conflicts between the indigenous groups and the government in Panama, which goes much further than just Redd," he says.

A spokesman for the government environment agency – the third major party in the talks – did not respond to questions.

Whatever triggered the breakdown in negotiations, it is hard to imagine a thriving Redd+ programme in Panama without the participation of Coonapip and the indigenous communities it represents. According to an unpublished study by Gerardo Veragara of McGill University in Canada, 54% of Panama's mature forest cover lies either within the five legally established indigenous territories, or in land claimed by indigenous communities outside these areas.

Villages like Marraganti, deep in the established Embera territory, are models of the way in which indigenous culture, community life and sustainable forest management are intertwined, though the evident poverty qualifies this idealised vision.

Isolated communities

Small plots producing rice, maize, yams and plantains allow for little more than domestic consumption. Traditional plant-based medicine cannot fully substitute for absent health services, nor rich local culture and tradition for good schools. The two-hour trip in a dug-out canoe to the nearest road link may be picturesque, but a way out of the community by land would make life easier.

Over the past few years, a sustainable community forestry project (that only operates during the January to March dry season) has provided funds for the gradual replacement of the wooden stilts holding up the houses with concrete columns, and palm thatch roofs with corrugated iron, but progress is slow.

The situation in Marraganti – surrounded by a wilderness that hides not only numerous undiscovered species but drug traffickers, people smugglers and Colombian guerrillas – raises questions as to what extent the indigenous love of the forest might wane if the village were less isolated. But Arimae, another Embera community located just off the final stretch of the Pan-American highway, suggests not necessarily.

In Arimae, the houses built at floor level, along with the teenagers hanging out at a small shop selling junk food, suggest a weakening of tradition, but the tie to the forest remains tight. It is particularly evident in the anger expressed at the "invaders" eating into their territory.

"We have a limit on how much of the forest we can clear to cultivate our crops, but the invaders cut it down without any respect and do terrible damage," says Belia Opua, as she washes clothes in the river.

The typical pattern is for poor non-indigenous farmers from elsewhere in Panama to occupy forest land, which they farm for domestic consumption before selling up their deforested plots. These end up as part of large cattle ranches or, more recently, plantations of non-native teak.

The indigenous leaders believe powerful people are pushing this process on, but even if this is not true, the "invaders" represent a vision of land management that sits uneasily with indigenous tradition.

"If we don't cut down the forest, we cannot support our families," says Melquiades Velasquez, who is in a legal battle to get the title to land also claimed by Arimae. "The indigenous people don't cut down so much because they are lazy, but it's not my problem if they don't want to work and want to die of hunger."

Coonapip paints the world view they see hidden behind Redd+ as different. "It is a new form of colonisation," says Hector González, the organisation's lawyer. "The government has always seen the land solely from a commercial point of view, and the UN doesn't understand the indigenous issue."

Such claims have thrown even the idea of a Redd+ mechanism in Panama into crisis, with a group of external experts investigating whether the UN has violated the human rights of the indigenous population.

Whatever they conclude, it will take a lot to rebuild relations to the point where the scheme can get back on track and provide support for indigenous communities to continue their way of life.

• Jo Tuckman travelled to Panama with Coonapip

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Three arrested after Ecuadorean victim snatched on street, bound and burned with acid while held for $3m ransom

A businessman was snatched from a New York City street in broad daylight, then held captive for more than a month in a warehouse where he was bound and burned with acid while his kidnappers demanded a $3m ransom that his family in Ecuador did not have, police said.

Pedro Portugal, 52, was found this week after detectives who had been monitoring phone calls noticed pizza deliveries to a deserted area in Queens and zeroed in on the warehouse.

Three men were arrested and charged with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment. One other suspect is believed to be at large in the US, and three fled to Ecuador.

Portugal, a father of six who owned a small accounting and tax firm in Queens, was burned with acid and spent almost a month with his head cloaked, officials said. He remained in hospital on Thursday.

Police said he was approached by three captors on 18 April. One flashed what looked like a police badge and called out the victim's name. He was forced into a sports utility vehicle where he was held at knifepoint and bound, then taken to the warehouse. His mother in Quito, Ecuador, received a call from a man calling himself Tito demanding a $3m ransom, police said.

Police commissioner Raymond Kelly said the family had some property, but not enough cash to pay the ransom. Five detectives were sent to Ecuador to learn more about the victim and his family.

"It's something that we're still investigating to see why these people thought that $3m might have been available," Kelly said.

Portugal was burned, beaten and threatened with mutilation and death, including threats to cut off his fingertips if the family didn't come up with the money, officials said. The man "suffered physical injuries and has been deeply traumatised by the ordeal", said the Queens district attorney Richard Brown.

On 20 May, investigators who had been monitoring the area noticed a light on upstairs in an otherwise dark warehouse in Long Island City, in Queens. They went in and discovered Portugal with his hands bound in a makeshift apartment.

"The person who was 'babysitting' him, as they called it, got away, but he was arrested very quickly," Kelly said.

Luis Lopez, vice-consul of Ecuador in New York, said police kept the consulate informed about the investigation.

Christian Acuna, 35, Dennis Alves, 32, and Eduardo Moncayo were arraigned late on Wednesday and were being held without bail.

According to the criminal complaint, Moncayo said he met a man named Claudio Ordonez, known as "Doctor", and they agreed to kidnap Portugal. Moncayo is accused of flashing the fake police badge that caused Portugal to stop on the street.

The men were accused of being paid between $800 a week and $5,000 in total by Ordonez to stay with Portugal at the warehouse.

Ordonez was at large, as was an unknown man wearing a red sweatshirt who was captured on surveillance footage at a Chase bank in Manhattan trying to withdraw money from Portugal's account.

Here's a story that the New York Times has yet to carry. A petition, signed by 23 leading US academics, authors and film-makers, has been launched which urges the paper's "public editor" to examine the Times's inconsistent coverage of two Latin American countries.

They argue that there are disparities between its largely negative reporting on Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chávez (who died in March) and its less critical reporting on Honduras under its successive leaders, Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo.

Among the petition's signatories are more than a dozen experts on Latin America and the media plus Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman, and the film directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. Here's the full script of the petition…

Dear Margaret Sullivan,

In a recent column, you observed:

Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters. When news organisations accept the government's way of speaking, they seem to accept the government's way of thinking. In The Times, these decisions carry even more weight.

In light of this comment we encourage you to compare the New York Times's characterisation of the leadership of the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and that of Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo in Honduras.

In the past four years, the Times has referred to Chávez as an "autocrat," "despot," "authoritarian ruler" and a "caudillo" in its news coverage. When opinion pieces are included, the Times has published at least 15 separate articles employing such language, depicting Chávez as a "dictator" or "strongman."

Over the same period - since the June 28 2009 military overthrow of elected president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras - Times contributors have never used such terms to describe Micheletti, who presided over the coup regime after Zelaya's removal, or Porfirio Lobo, who succeeded him.

Instead, the paper has variously described them in its news coverage as "interim," "de facto," and "new."

Porfirio Lobo assumed the presidency after winning an election held under Micheletti's coup government. The elections were marked by repression and censorship, and international monitors, like the Carter Centre, boycotted them. Since the coup, Honduras's military and police have routinely killed civilians.

Over the past 14 years, Venezuela has had 16 elections or referenda deemed free and fair by leading international authorities. Jimmy Carter praised Venezuela's elections, among the 92 the Carter Centre has monitored, as having "a very wonderful voting system." He concluded that "the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world."

While some human rights groups have criticised the Chávez government, Venezuela has had no pattern of state security forces murdering civilians, as is the case in Honduras.

Whatever one thinks of the democratic credentials of Chávez's presidency - and we recognise that reasonable people can disagree about it - there is nothing in the record, when compared with that of his Honduran counterparts, to warrant the discrepancies in the Times's coverage of the two governments.

We urge you to examine this disparity in coverage and language use, particularly as it may appear to your readers to track all too closely the US government's positions regarding the Honduran government (which it supports) and the Venezuelan government (which it opposes) - precisely the syndrome you describe and warn against in your column.

Yours sincerely...

To see all 23 of the early signatories, and to sign the petition, go here

Sources: NYTimes eXaminer/North American Congress on Latin America

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Personal importation of appliances including microwaves and fridges was restricted eight years ago during energy crisis

Cuba has authorised individual imports of appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators and microwave ovens, lifting a ban imposed in 2005 amid a wave of energy shortages and blackouts.

Islanders can now bring up to two such appliances per person into the country for noncommercial purposes. The list of approved items includes air conditioners with a capacity of less than one ton, ovens that consume less than 1,500 watts and microwaves under 2,000 watts. It also covers water heaters, toasters and irons.

Personal importation of energy-sucking appliances was restricted eight years ago during an energy crisis that prompted the then president, Fidel Castro, to launch the so-called energy revolution, seeking to lower consumption.

Castro went on state TV to promote more efficient rice steamers and pressure cookers, government workers fanned out across the island replacing incandescent lightbulbs in homes, and the electrical grid got an update.

Blackouts are much rarer today, thanks in part to a steady flow of oil on preferential terms from close ally Venezuela.

In 2011 Cuba resumed local sales of domestic appliances in response to demand and to support private small businesses launched under the economic reforms of the current president, Raul Castro. Authorities have continued to stress the importance of conservation to keep Cuba's power grid from being overtaxed.

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Victims of 1980s violence express dismay as court annuls proceedings in case against José Efraín Ríos Montt

A campaign for justice dating back to Latin America's "dirty wars" suffered a setback on Monday when Guatemala's constitutional court overturned the genocide conviction against the former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt.

The retired general was sentenced to 80 years in prison earlier this month for complicity in the deaths of 1,771 people of the Ixil Maya ethnic group during his period in power in 1982-83.

The earlier conviction by the three presiding judges was hailed as a breakthrough because it was the first time a former head of government was held responsible for killings in Guatemala.

But in the latest in a series of legal twists, the constitutional court has annulled all proceedings in the case that took place after 19 April, including concluding statements and the final judgment. It is unclear whether there will be a retrial.

Victims of the atrocities carried out in the 1980s fear the latest decision highlights the considerable influence retained by Ríos Montt, who was once feted by the US president Ronald Reagan as a "man of great personal integrity".

Ana Caba, an ethnic Ixil who survived the civil war after fleeing her home, was stunned by the decision.

"I'm distressed," she told Reuters. "I don't know what's happening. That's how this country is. The powerful people do what they want and we poor and indigenous are devalued. We don't get justice. Justice means nothing for us."

The former dictator has only served a couple of nights in prison. Soon after his conviction on 10 May, the 86-year-old complained of faintness and was transferred to an army hospital for respiratory and prostate tests.

Meanwhile, his supporters, including Guatemala's powerful business federation Cacif, lobbied successfully for the judgment to be overturned.

In a three-to-two decision by a five-judge panel, the constitutional court threw out the earlier ruling on the grounds that the case had been disrupted on 19 April. On that day the case was briefly suspended when two of the presiding judges clashed over the handling of the case. Ríos Montt was also temporarily left without a legal defence when his lawyer was expelled from the courtroom for several hours after accusing the presiding judge of bias. The constitutional court said the lawyer's request to recuse the judge was not sufficiently addressed.

At the very least, the latest decision resets the clock and is likely to allow Ríos Montt to return to house arrest. The attorney general's office is expected to appeal against the ruling.

Amnesty International described the decision as a "devastating blow for the victims of the serious human rights violations committed during the conflict" in Guatemala.

An estimated 200,000 people – mostly indigenous Mayans – were killed and 45,000 others "disappeared" during the 36-year civil war. Among the most violent periods was Ríos Montt's 17 months in power.

In hearings before 19 April, the prosecutor, Orlando López, called on almost 100 witnesses to military atrocities. Of those, 94 had lost a family member, 83 had suffered arson attacks, 16 were sexually assaulted and seven were tortured. He said forensic experts had examined mass graves that showed many victims, including children, were killed in assassination-style shootings.

How that evidence will now be used has been thrown into question.

Numerous trials and tribunals have been held in Latin America in recent years to assess the crimes and punish the perpetrators of a series of bloody conflicts against suspected leftwing insurgents in the 1970s and 80s. Chile and Peru have established "memory museums" to reflect on the conflicts in their countries. Brazil has a truth commission that is examining official records on murder and torture during its 1964-85 dictatorship. Argentina has annulled amnesties and tried several prominent members of the junta who set up internment camps, tortured political prisoners and dumped bodies in the Atlantic.

Even compared with these cases and others in Nicaragua, Honduras and elsewhere, Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based thinktank, has described the killings in Guatemala as "off the charts".

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3. Roberto Azevedo’s WTO appointment gives Brazil a seat at the top table

New director general was not Britain and the US's preferred candiate but gives developing nations a voice at WTO

Earlier this month the World Trade Organisation (WTO) announced that it had chosen the Brazilian Roberto Azevedo, 55, as its next director general. In September he will take over from France's Pascal Lamy, who has served two four-year terms.

It is a personal success for this career diplomat, but it is also a victory for Brazil on the international scene. The Brazilian diplomatic corps pulled out all the stops to convince a majority of the 159 member states that their candidate was the right choice. But Azevedo's appointment is also a new departure, this being the first time that a Brazilian has headed one of the key bodies in the postwar Bretton Woods system. The country at last has a seat at the top table.

The vote "shows a global order in transformation", said foreign minister Antonio Patriota, with "emerging markets [showing] leadership".

The selection process took more than four months. Starting with nine declared candidates, it involved three stages, gradually narrowing the field down to two finalists, Mexico's Herminio Blanco and Azevedo. Both undertook to try to restart the Doha round of trade liberalisation, originally launched in 2001 but held up for years by the deep divisions between developed and developing countries.

Azevedo has been Brazil's permanent representative at the WTO since 2008, establishing a reputation as a gifted negotiator and an advocate of multilateralism. He gained the support of 89 countries, according to the Brazilian foreign ministry.

Some sources maintain that all the African countries and a very large majority among poor and developing nations backed Azevedo. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) were certainly unanimous in their support, and after Indonesia's Mari Pangestu had been knocked out, at least three more Asian countries switched to the Brazilian candidate.

Brazil's good relations with emerging countries clearly weighed in the balance, whereas Blanco, backed by the United States, Japan and Britain, was seen as an advocate of free-market values. Despite Brussels' call for a united front in favour of the Mexican, divisions among European Union member states sealed the latter's fate.

According to the Brazilian daily Valor, President Dilma Rousseff called her French opposite number François Hollande the week before the vote, who allegedly told her that France had not yet taken a decision "but that it would vote for a name, not a country".

Azevedo joined Brazil's diplomatic service in 1984 and was allocated to the permanent mission in Geneva in 1997. Four years later he helped set up a dispute settlement unit at the foreign ministry. With the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2003, Brazil started to play a leading role in the WTO, acting as one of the main negotiators alongside the EU, China and the US.

As the head of the Brazilian delegation, he successfully campaigned against subsidies in rich countries, in particular cotton in the US and sugar in the EU. He has taken part in all the ministerial conferences so far in the Doha round.

The main handicap for Azevedo was Rousseff's protectionist policies, with a range of tax incentives and higher customs duty on about 100 imported goods. Addressing the media, he explained that once elected as the WTO head, he would no longer represent a single country. "Brazil's candidacy [will] bring people together, it does not divide them," he  asserted.

Azevedo's acid test will probably come in December, barely three months after taking office, with the ninth WTO ministerial conference in Bali. He will need all his talent to avoid further deadlock, at a time when people all over the world are asking what purpose the organisation serves.

• This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde

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Two flawed analogies are trotted out: comparing the eurozone to Argentina's 1990s dollar-pegging, and the EU to the US

A true giant of modern thought, Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that all problems in philosophy arise from the misguided use of language. Although this opinion, put forward in his early writings, seems far-fetched nowadays, Wittgenstein had a point.

Since the start of the sovereign debt crisis, two false analogies have prevailed in the public dialogue regarding Europe: the first draws parallels between the present situation in the eurozone periphery with the crisis in Argentina in 2001, while the second, especially popular in the British press, compares the European unification process with the federalisation of the United States of America.

Starting with the first analogy, it is almost impossible to follow the debate on the euro crisis for a week without bumping into an article that likens Greece and the rest of the European south to Argentina. The most recent example I saw, is by Thomas Catan and Marcus Walker, published in the Wall Street Journal, on 19 May: "Like countries that joined the eurozone, Argentina in the 1990s gave up control over its own currency, fixing it 1-to-1 to the US dollar… Like euro members today, Argentina had to grin and bear it until wages and prices fell far enough for the country to become competitive again," reads the article. The authors claim that Argentina should be "a cautionary tale" for leaders in Europe, because Argentineans, like Greeks or Spaniards, supported the peso's peg to the dollar, until they suddenly stopped.

The analogy is outrageous. Argentina, like dozens of countries before and after it, had opted to peg its currency to another, namely the dollar. In fact, this is not unusual in international economics. The 17 members of the eurozone, on the other hand, have chosen to denounce their own currencies and "irrevocably" adopt another. I sometimes wonder how the hell people cannot see the difference here: the drachma, the lira, the deutsche mark, simply do not exist today. Hence, no one can unpeg them from the euro or the dollar. Let me put it another way: Argentina devalued its own currency; Greece will have to introduce another one. The new currency will not be the drachma of the 1990s. It will just have the same name as the drachma.

True, no decision in politics is truly irrevocable. So the Cypriots or the Greeks, for example, could choose to ignore the logistical chaos of abandoning the euro and print a new currency. But will the new currency, which will be issued by effectively bankrupt states, have any exchange value whatsoever? Will the Russians accept it in exchange for oil, and the Americans in exchange for medicines? Especially Greece, which, unlike Argentina, is not a net exporter of raw materials (or any materials for that matter), will have no means to support the new currency. Greeks can print as much as they like of it, but will they be able to buy electrical appliances, cars or even foods produced abroad with it? The answer is no. Sure, they will be holding real money in their hands, but they will still be "poor", probably much poorer than they are now.

There is another, even more obvious difference between the eurozone and Argentina. The government of Buenos Aires chose to unpeg its currency from the currency of a foreign nation. In the case of eurozone, the single currency is the most crucial part of an immensely complicated structure of unified decision-making we came to call the European Union. Like the euro, the EU is also a unique construct in modern history and all analogies drawn between it and other cases of economic crises are unfounded. The EU is based on the premise of an "ever closer union". Sure, you can slow down the whole process and even bring it to a halt, as the British government demands. But if you put it in reverse gear by dissolving the euro, this will trigger a chain reaction of "renationalising" that will bring the EU to an end. And that is only the best-case scenario. In fact, the most likely scenario is that the chaos that would ensue immediately after the dissolution of the euro would lead to the sudden death of the EU. It doesn't take a genius to understand that the economic, political and geostrategic stakes are immensely higher for the eurozone member states than they were for Argentina in 2001. I am not arguing that such an eventuality is impossible, but it will be like nothing we have seen before, just as the EU is like nothing we have seen before.

And that brings us to my second point. The term "United States of Europe," which is so often used in the British press, mistakenly likens the EU to the USA and implies that Brussels is (or soon will be) the capital of a federal state. Nothing could be further from the truth. In every single federal state in the world, the central government is responsible for "high politics", most notably defence, foreign policy and budget. Local governments, in turn, are relatively free to decide on "low politics" issues, like schools, healthcare, etc. What happens in the EU is exactly the opposite. Its member states are close allies (most are members of Nato anyway), but they do not have a common defence policy. There is some degree of coordination in foreign affairs, but rarely unanimity, let alone central planning. And the central budget of the EU is just 1% of the region's total GDP. The nation states collect taxes and decide where and how they will spend most of their money. The fiscal pact, which was voluntarily signed between sovereign EU governments, just puts a limit on how much they are allowed to spend.

Unlike federal states, the EU is responsible for the micromanagement in "low politics" fields. It is obviously annoying for some of us to have Brussels decide on trivial things, but it is also the only way for a single market to function. Someone needs to draw and enforce the rules for competition, trade, patents, recognition of professional qualifications, etc. Otherwise, the free movement of goods, capital, services and people that makes the EU by far the largest market in the world would be impossible. In fact, it is the member states and the representatives of national governments who decide most of these rules, in the Council of Ministers' meetings. The EU commission largely suggests directives to member states, implements their decisions and acts as the guardian of the treaties as national governments have agreed. Even for the eurozone member states, the most powerful decision-making body is not the commission, but the Eurogroup, which comprises of the finance ministers of member states.

In other words, both the EU and the eurozone are unique structures. Analogies with the US, Argentina or other places in the world, are erroneous and only confuse the issue. So please, colleagues, just stop it, if for no other reason than that Wittgenstein would be furious with you.

Trial of Efrain Rios Montt, convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity committed in 1980s, thrown into disarray

Guatemala's top court has overturned the genocide conviction of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, ordering that the trial be taken back to the middle of proceedings.

The ruling late on Monday threw into disarray a process that had been hailed as historic for delivering the first guilty verdict for genocide against a former Latin American leader.

The constitutional court secretary, Martin Guzman, said the trial needed to go back to where it stood on 19 April to resolve several appeal issues.

The ruling came 10 days after a three-judge panel convicted the 86-year-old former general of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in massacres of Mayans during Guatemala's bloody 36-year civil war.

The panel found after two months of testimony that Rios Montt knew about the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayans in the western highlands and did not stop it.

The tribunal sentenced Rios Montt to 80 years in prison, drawing cheers from many Guatemalans. It was the first time a former Latin American leader was convicted of such crimes in his home country and the first official acknowledgment that genocide occurred during the war – something the current president, retired general Otto Perez Molina, has denied.

Rios Montt's lawyers immediately filed an appeal, and he spent three days in prison before he was moved to a military hospital, where he remains.

The court said on Monday it threw out his conviction because the trial should have been stopped while appeals filed by the defence were resolved.

Defensce lawyer Francisco Garcia Gudiel told the Associated Press by telephone he would seek the former dictator's freedom on Tuesday.

"There is no alternative," Garcia said. "The court has made a legal resolution after many flaws in the process. Tomorrow we will ask that they liberate the general, who is being imprisoned unjustly."

Representatives of the victims who testified against Rios Montt ccould not be reached for comment.

The proceedings, which started in March, had moved back and forth since 18 April, when a Guatemalan judge ordered that the trial should be restarted just as it was nearing closing arguments.

Judge Carol Patricia Flores had been recently reinstated by the constitutional court after being recused in February 2012. She ruled that all actions taken in the case since she was first asked to step down were null, sending the trial back to square one.

On 19 April, the tribunal hearing the oral part of the trial asked the court to decide if proceedings should continue.

The trial was suspended for 12 days amid appeals and at times appeared headed for annulment. But it resumed on 30 April, and on 10 May the three-judge tribunal found Rios Montt guilty after more than 100 witnesses and experts testified about mass rapes and the killings of women and children and other atrocities committed by government troops.

Rios Montt ruled Guatemala in 1982-83 following a military coup.

Survivors and relatives of victims had sought for 30 years to bring punishment for Rios Montt. For international observers and Guatemalans on both sides of the war, the trial was seen as a turning point in a nation still wrestling with the trauma of a conflict that killed some 200,000 people.

The defence constantly claimed flaws and miscarriages of justice.

Courts solved more than 100 complaints and injunctions filed by the defence before the trial even started.

Rios Montt's defensce team walked out on 18 April, arguing that they couldn't continue to be part of such bad proceedings. When the three-judge tribunal resumed the trial, it ordered two public defenders to represent Rios Montt and his co-defendant, Jose Rodriguez Sanchez.

Rios Montt rejected his public defender and instead brought in Garcia, who was expelled earlier by the tribunal but reinstated by an appeals court.

Garcia had earlier been ordered off the case after he called for the three judges on the tribunal to be removed from the proceedings. He kept trying to have the judges dismissed. And the constitutional court ruled on Monday that the trial should have been suspended while his appeal was heard.

The trial "was unlawfully reopened", Garcia said at the time.

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