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Why War Criminals Could Walk Free in Guatemala

By Jo-Marie Burt

A get-out-of-jail-free card for war criminals would be a blow to Guatemala’s anti-impunity movement.

Emma Theissen de Molina looked on helplessly as a military official shoved her 14-year-old son Marco Antonio into the back of a pick-up truck and sped off. The military was trying to track down her daughter, Emma Molina Theissen, a political activist who’d managed to escape after enduring nine days of imprisonment, torture, and gang rape in a secret military prison. Unable to find Emma, they kidnapped her brother instead. That was in 1981. To this day, Marco Antonio’s family does not know what happened to him. 

For decades, the Molina Theissen family has been fighting to hold the...

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