Published on the SUN Issue of today.

Man sentenced to 6,060 years in prison

By STAFF REPORTER

Published: 13th March 2012

A FORMER soldier has been sentenced to 6,060 years in prison.

Pedro Pimentel Rios was extradited from the US to Guatemala last year to be held to account over his role in the 1982 slaughter of 201 people in the Central American country.

Ex special forces soldier Rios, 55, was involved in what became known as the "Dos Erres" massacre after the northern Guatemala hamlet where the killings took place.

The violence was one of the bloodiest atrocities of the country's 1960-1996 civil war.

Dozens of soldiers ransacked the village, searching homes for weapons and systematically slaughtering men, women and children.

Soldiers bludgeoned villagers with a sledgehammer, threw them down a well and raped women and girls before killing them, according to court papers.

The sentence is largely symbolic as the maximum time a convict can serve under Guatemalan law is 50 years.

The country's civil war claimed at least 200,000 lives and the US-backed army was responsible for most of them, said a subsequent truth commission.