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Guatemalan press prints leaks from sensitive murder probeGuatemala City, Dec 9, 2009 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Revelations from two of the 11 people in custody for the May 10 murder of a prominent Guatemalan attorney were cited Wednesday in the press despite the media blackout declared by authorities. The slaying of Rodrigo Rosenberg became a political scandal with the appearance days after the murder of a videotape in which the attorney said he feared that Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom was planning to kill him. Amid a pervasive lack of confidence in the police, Guatemala's International Commission Against Impunity, chaired by Spanish jurist Carlos Castresana, took charge of the investigation. The first arrests came in September and Castresana said then that the suspects were members of a gang dedicated to kidnapping, extortion and murder-for-hire. Guatemalan newspapers reported Wednesday on a closed hearing where prosecutors questioned two suspects now cooperating with authorities in a bid to obtain reduced sentences: erstwhile police officer Mario Luis Paz Mejia and civilian Carlos Humberto Aragon Cardona. In his testimony, Paz identified Lucas Josue Santiago - also in custody - as the one who shot Rosenberg while the attorney was riding his bicycle in an affluent area of Guatemala City. Paz said the idea of killing Rosenberg originated with Aragon's unnamed boss, who claimed the lawyer had extorted money from him in connection with the sale of some vehicles. To carry out the killing, Paz said he contacted fellow detainee Wilian Gilberto Santos Divas, whom he described as the leader of a band of hit men. The conspirators received 50,000 quetzales ($5,024) for the murder, according to the testimony cited by the press. Rosenberg said on a posthumously released videotape that his life was at risk because he had evidence of the involvement of the president and his associates in the April 14 slayings of businessman Khalil Musa and his daughter, Marjorie. Musa, appointed by Colom to the board of the public-private Banrural development bank, was killed for refusing to cover up "illegal, multi-million-dollar transactions being carried out day after day" at the financial institution, Rosenberg said. Rosenberg's murder and the ensuing scandal divided Guatemalans largely along class lines, as the middle and upper classes demanded that Colom step down and the country's poor majority stood behind the head of state. "I haven't killed anyone. I'm not a drug trafficker and I've never made shady deals against the opposition. The truth about Rosenberg's murder will be revealed; the truth about the preparation of the video and the hatching of this plot also will be discovered," Colom told Efe four months ago in an interview. EFE oro/dr |