Getting Away With Murder

The recent history of Guatemala is in many ways the tale of a country being gradually overwhelmed by crime, but in February Guatemala was rocked by a crime sensational even by its standards. Three prominent Salvadoran legislators--including Eduardo D'Aubuisson, son of the infamous rightist Roberto D'Aubuisson--were on their way to Guatemala City for a meeting of the Central American Parliament, a legislative body created in 1986 to try to heal the rifts that run through this fractious region. Not far from Guatemala City, the luxury SUV carrying the legislators was ambushed and diverted to a rural farm, where the three Salvadorans--along with their chauffeur--were riddled with bullets and then torched inside their vehicle.

A transponder soon revealed the kidnappers to be members of the Guatemalan National Police, including the head of its organized crime division. The accused cops were locked up in El Boquerón, a maximum-security prison forty miles outside Guatemala City.

A few days later, all visitors to the prison were asked to leave, and in full view of a public already riveted by the initial crime, a team of assassins passed unimpeded through a series of locked gates, shot the police in their cells, slit their throats and promptly disappeared. According to the Los Angeles Times, a group of FBI investigators sent to help Guatemala with the subsequent investigation were "appalled" by the conduct of their Guatemalan counterparts and found the crime scenes compromised and obvious leads not followed up. A Central American intelligence official told the LA Times's Héctor Tobar that Guatemalan investigators "simply and intentionally refused to pass information to the FBI."

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