Members of the Kaibiles, the elite special forces that committed the massacre at Dos Erres. Credit: This American Life
Canadian Court Sanctions Perpetrator of 1982 Dos Erres Massacre in Guatemala
Canada’s Government Fails to Enforce War Crimes Act
Massacre survivor: “No justice”
Washington, D.C., February 24, 2026 - After a decade-long investigation and a trial lasting more than five weeks, a federal court in Ottawa has ruled to revoke the Canadian citizenship of a Guatemalan military officer who participated in a horrific and notorious massacre of hundreds of innocent civilians in 1982.
The February 5 decision also concluded that Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, a former second lieutenant and member of the Kaibiles special operations force, committed crimes against humanity when he took part in the slaughter of men, women, and children living in the tiny settlement of Dos Erres, in northern Guatemala. The finding renders Sosa “inadmissible” to Canada and subject to removal from the country.
The National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle gave expert testimony during the trial.
Today, the Archive publishes the court’s ruling as well as U.S. and Guatemalan documents that were used as evidence in the case, including “Campaign Plan Victoria 82,” an essential Guatemalan Army document which established counterinsurgency strategy during the year of the Dos Erres massacre, and which is published today for the first time. Other key records posted today include cables from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala, which in the immediate aftermath of the massacre named the military responsible.
Judge Roger R. Lafrenière’s ruling is a modest victory in the long, torturous legal case that the Dos Erres massacre represents but a blow for survivors of the massacre and for human rights advocates. Under universal jurisdiction, Canada has the power to prosecute perpetrators for the worst international crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity, and it chose not to do so. Instead, the government pursued administrative sanctions against Jorge Sosa, sparing him from facing accountability for his role in the atrocities he is alleged to have committed.
One massacre survivor reacted with disbelief to the court’s decision.
Ramiro Osorio Cristales was five when his family was killed in Dos Erres. He lives in Canada as a refugee and served as a witness in the Ottawa trial. When the ruling was issued, Osorio gave a statement expressing his disappointment.
“All they’re going to do is take away his citizenship and expel him. There will be no justice. In reality nothing has been done, or almost nothing… What we wanted was for him to pay for his actions and be tried for his crimes.”
As Judge Lafrenière stated in the preamble of his decision, the Dos Erres massacre took place within the context of a “widespread and systematic attack perpetrated by the Guatemalan military against the civilian population in the 1980s.” The violence was part of a bloody civil conflict that raged intermittently in Guatemala for almost four decades, from 1960 until a peace accord was signed in 1996. The war pitted government forces against armed insurgencies, militant social movements, and anyone suspected of subversive sympathies, including entire communities. When the fighting ended, some 200,000 Guatemalan civilians were dead or missing and at least one million people had been displaced.
In 1999, a United Nations-sponsored truth commission found that 93 percent of documented human rights abuses during the war were committed by “state forces and related paramilitary groups.” According to the commission, the army exterminated 626 villages and smaller settlements in “scorched earth” operations that swept across rural Guatemala[1]. Dos Erres was one of them.
On the night of December 6, 1982, a platoon of 40 soldiers led by an elite unit of Kaibil special forces left their army base in the Petén for Dos Erres, an agricultural community of about 300 people identified by Guatemalan military intelligence as sympathetic to the armed insurgency. The troops arrived at the settlement in the early morning hours of December 7. They were dressed as guerrillas so as to confuse the residents about their identity. The soldiers went from house to house, waking families and pulling them into the town center. They sequestered the men inside the school and the women and children in an evangelical church. The massacre began when one of the soldiers threw an infant down a deep, dry well. The Kaibiles tortured the men and raped many of the girls and women before killing them and throwing their bodies into the well. By the evening of December 7, they had murdered most of the Dos Erres inhabitants, including the children. As the Canadian judgement described,
On the morning of December 8, as the patrol unit was preparing to leave, some unsuspecting people arrived in the hamlet. With the well already full, they were taken to a location half an hour away and executed. Two teenage girls who were kept alive by the patrol unit were raped repeatedly and later strangled to death. Only two young boys, one with uncommon light-coloured eyes, are believed to have survived. When the patrol unit left Las Dos Erres, the village was effectively wiped off the face of the earth. (pp. 6)
More than 250 people are believed to have died in the massacre.[2]
The Kaibiles were soldiers trained in special counterinsurgency and counterterror operations, notorious for their use of torture and extreme brutality. In the Canadian judgement, Jorge Sosa Orantes was identified as an instructor at the Kaibil School and “one of the officers in command of the operation at Las Dos Erres.” (pp. 3-4) Based on witness testimony and other evidence introduced at trial, Judge Lafrenière found that Sosa directly committed murders of villagers, that he abetted the murder of villagers by his subordinates, and that his acts were committed “as part of the broader attack against civilians at or around Dos Erres” (pp. 6).
After Las Dos Erres was “wiped off the face of the earth,” Jorge Sosa remained as an instructor at the Kaibil School. His military record from that point indicates that his role in the Dos Erres massacre had no negative effect on his career. He was promoted to full lieutenant and transferred to the conflictive military zone in the Quiché in 1983, where he was a platoon commander. In 1984, he was moved to Guatemala City to work in the Military Academy (Escuela Politécnica).
Sosa deserted the army and went to the United States in 1985, where he requested political asylum, claiming to be an honorable former soldier under death threats from Guatemalan guerrillas. When the U.S. rejected his application, he appealed to the Canadian consulate in San Francisco for refugee status and residency in Canada. The failed U.S. attempt compelled Sosa to adjust his tactics. As Canadian prosecutors would later document, Sosa now depicted himself as “a forlorn factory worker” who had joined fellow workers to agitate for better labor conditions. After his colleagues were arrested, Sosa told the immigration officers, he was forced to flee Guatemala with his family, “out of fear of political persecution.” (pp. 49)
The story worked. Sosa received a visa for permanent residency in Canada in 1988 and became a Canadian citizen in 1992. Thirty-four years later, Judge Lafrenière would use Sosa’s fraudulent declarations to revoke his citizenship, calling the Guatemalan ex-military member “a consummate liar.” (pp. 116)
These details are public because when the Canadian government brought charges against Sosa Orantes, they were brought on behalf of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. The Ministry of Justice chose not to prosecute the Guatemalan under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, the 26-year-old law that gives Canadian prosecutors the power of universal jurisdiction. The Justice Ministry never issued a public statement making its decision explicit, and it’s not clear at what point that calculation was made. When the authorities contacted the National Security Archive in 2016 to inquire whether we would consider participating as experts in the case, they did so through the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section of Canada’s Department of Justice.
But if Sosa’s citizenship rested on whether or not he gave false information during his immigration interviews, to pronounce him inadmissible the judge had to find “reasonable grounds to believe” that he was guilty of committing the most monstrous of human rights crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. They would include – to quote Canada’s own law – “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, persecution or any other inhumane act or omission that is committed against any civilian population or any identifiable group...” It’s a finding that the government’s prosecutors presented forcefully in their arguments before the court, in the documents they introduced as evidence, and in the witnesses they brought in to testify.
In his 136-page ruling, Judge Lafrenière used the evidence submitted to examine the patterns of violence committed by the Guatemalan military against civilians in the early 1980s;[3] the military’s counterinsurgency strategy and the structure and operations of the Kaibil special forces;[4] declassified U.S. and Guatemalan records showing that the Dos Erres massacre was consistent with other atrocities committed during the war;[5] and the results of the first exhumations in Dos Erres, carried out in the 1990s by a team of forensic anthropologists.[6] The Court heard the testimony of a former Kaibil and witness to the massacre who described the actions of then-Lieutenant Jorge Sosa Orantes[7] and the memories of Ramiro Osorio Cristales, one of the only living survivors of the massacre, who – 44 years ago – lost his father, mother, sisters and brothers.[8] Osorio’s testimony was more than a litany of the horrors he experienced. As the judge wrote in his decision,
He remembers Las Dos Erres as a rural green landscape, inhabited by a farming community. Besides the small wood houses, there was a church and school in the village. He lived there with his mother, Petrona, his father, Victor, and his five siblings. He recalled his youngest sibling, a sister, was around two months old at the time of the massacre. (p103)
Concluding, Judge Lafrenière found that, “in December 1982, Mr. Sosa participated in the horrific massacre as part of the Kaibil patrol operation at Las Dos Erres.” The judge was unequivocal in characterizing the destruction of Dos Erres and the murder of its residents as crimes against humanity. His decision means that Sosa Orantes is now considered inadmissible to Canada and is subject to removal.
But Sosa Orantes continues to enjoy impunity for the massacre itself.
Canada has long held itself to be a supporter of international human rights and leader in the implementation of universal jurisdiction. Two years after the adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998, which established the International Criminal Court, Canada became the first country in the world to incorporate the statute’s obligations into domestic law, with approval of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act in 2000. The act gave Canada the power to investigate and prosecute suspected perpetrators of international crimes in national courts, whether or not the crimes took place in Canada or the accused were Canadian citizens.
But 26 years later, Canada’s track record on universal jurisdiction is thin. Since the law was ratified, there have been precisely two trials under the act. In 2005, Rwandan Désiré Munyaneza became the first person to be arrested under the law. He was tried on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, found guilty in 2009 and sentenced to life in prison. A second Rwandan living in Canada, Jacques Mungwarere, was similarly charged and tried but acquitted in 2013. A third case stems from the 2024 arrest of Ahmed Eldidi, a naturalized citizen accused of dismembering a prisoner on behalf of Daesh (ISIS or the Islamic State) in 2015.
International law experts in Canada have warned for years that the government’s predilection for immigration remedies over war crimes prosecutions damaged Canada’s reputation as a pioneer in universal jurisdiction. In 2010, legal scholar Fannie Lafontaine published a seminal article on Canada’s War Crimes Act, ten years after it became law and in the immediate wake of the Munyaneza conviction. The authorities “should consider the responsibility that Canada has accepted for itself in the global fight against impunity,” she wrote. “Once a suspect is found on Canadian territory, Canada bears the responsibility of the international community to ensure accountability, in Canada or abroad.”[9] The experts are also skeptical of Canada’s commitment to follow through with its case against Ahmed Eldidi. After the Eldidi indictment was made public in 2024, Mark Kersten, a professor of criminal justice in British Columbia, observed that “Canada’s ability to prosecute international crimes in Canadian courts has atrophied.”
Avocats Sans Frontières (Lawyers Without Borders) Canada has supported Dos Erres massacre survivor Ramiro Osorio Cristales with legal assistance for more than 15 years. In a recent report, ASF Canada denounced the “clear lack of political will” on the part of Canadian authorities to use the legal tools they had at their disposal to prosecute Jorge Sosa Orantes. While immigration measures such as exclusion or removal “are useful in preventing the country from becoming a refuge for war criminals,” the report pointed out, “they do not fulfill the broader objective of bringing justice to victims and ensuring accountability for these crimes.”
Canada’s single active case related to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (Eldidi) stands in stark contrast to states that are more actively pursuing universal jurisdiction prosecutions. According to the Geneva-based justice advocacy and research organization TRIAL International in its Universal Jurisdiction Review 2025, France has 26 active cases; Germany has 20, Belgium and the Netherlands have 12 each. Outside of Europe, Argentina has seven cases underway.
It is unclear where Jorge Sosa Orantes is now. He never appeared in the Ottawa courtroom, so he was tried in absentia. In his ruling, Judge Lafrenière wrote that the ex-Kaibil had sworn in an affidavit to the Court that he was living in Alberta; later it became evident that he wasn’t even in Canada at the time. (pp. 117)
Theoretically, if Sosa is in the country, he could be rearrested for crimes against humanity – but it’s extremely unlikely. As ASF Canada’s director of legal affairs, Moussa Bienvenu Haba, explained to us in a recent phone call, the government just invested ten years of investigative resources in an immigration and citizenship case; it would be hard to imagine the Ministry of Justice now deciding to go forward with a second prosecution under the War Crimes Act. In the event that Sosa is still in Canada, the most likely development would be his removal from the country.
It would not be the first time. Sosa Orantes was arrested and removed from Canada once before – in 2011, to the United States. Despite having been refused refugee status by the U.S. in the 1980s, Sosa later married an American citizen and obtained his U.S. citizenship in 2008. When U.S. authorities realized he had lied about his Guatemalan military service on his naturalization application, the Justice Department charged him with fraud and requested his extradition.
At the time, extradition requests from two other countries were in play. One was from Spain, part of a sprawling genocide case being heard in the Spanish National Court, which, like Canada, recognized universal jurisdiction.[10] The other was from Guatemala. By 2011, Guatemala had a new attorney general named Claudia Paz y Paz who was willing to prosecute historical human rights criminal cases. The first trial of soldiers charged in the Dos Erres massacre ended on August 2, 2011, with the conviction of four former Kaibiles: Daniel Martínez, Manuel Pop Sun, Reyes Collin Golip and Lt. Carlos Antonio Carias. Each one received a sentence of 30 years for every Dos Erres inhabitant killed (201 were identified in the case) – 6,060 years in all – on charges of murder and crimes against humanity.
Canada could have sent Sosa Orantes to the country of his birth, where he would have faced a trial for the alleged atrocities. Instead, Canada chose to extradite Sosa to the United States, where the most serious charge he faced was falsifying a document. Convicted of fraud in 2014 in California, Sosa Orantes served five years in U.S. federal prison before returning to Canada in 2020.
In the wake of Judge Lafrenière’s ruling, Sosa Orantes will most likely be removed again, this time to Guatemala. But the accountability landscape in the Central American country has radically changed since 2011. Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras, who has been in office for eight years, has steadily undermined the judicial system’s capacity to prosecute former members of the military and security forces for human rights violations. Porras has dismantled the Public Ministry legal team that investigated human rights crimes (Fiscalía de Derechos Humanos); she has intimidated, harassed and criminally charged judges who ruled in past human rights trials; and judges loyal to her have ordered the release of military prisoners already convicted for crimes against humanity.[11]
The assault on human rights justice in Guatemala has had a direct impact on the Dos Erres case. From 2011-18, Guatemalan courts held three trials of accused perpetrators and convicted six former Kaibil soldiers for the massacre. But on November 7, 2023, the first Dos Erres trial held since Consuelo Porras became attorney general concluded with acquittals for all three defendants. One of those was Gilberto Jordán, who in 2010 was convicted by a Florida court for lying about his military service when he applied for citizenship in order to hide his role in the massacre. As prosecutors told the judge during the trial, the former Kaibil confessed to throwing a baby down the well at the start of the massacre and bringing dozens of other men, women and children to the well to be killed. Jordán received the maximum sentence allowable in the United States for naturalization fraud and served ten years in federal prison. After his removal to Guatemala in 2020, he was acquitted along with fellow Kaibil veterans Alfonso Bulux and José Mardoqueo Ortiz.
In May, María Consuelo Porras will reach the end of her second and last term in office as attorney general. She will leave behind a justice system in shambles and one that will remain openly hostile to human rights prosecutions for the foreseeable future. If Canada does deport Jorge Sosa Orantes to Guatemala, the prospects for his conviction there now seem dim.
During Sosa’s trial in Canada, the government’s prosecutors made a powerful case to find the ex-Kaibil responsible for crimes against humanity. The charge wasn’t necessary in order for Canada to strip his citizenship from him; it was a requirement for his removal from the country. But the attorneys made more than an argument about “inadmissibility.” As prosecutor Sonja Pavic emphasized to Judge Lafrenière during closing arguments, “Your decision will have an impact for the historical record and for the victims and their families.” The judge’s ruling, which unequivocally frames the atrocities committed in Dos Erres as crimes against humanity, was his answer.
The Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, however, grants the power to decide whether or not to pursue charges under the Act to one person: Canada’s Minister of Justice. Time and time again, the Justice Minister has chosen not to do so.
In the Dos Erres case, Canada’s decision hurt Ramiro Osorio Cristales most directly: the country that offered him refuge after he fled Guatemala is the same country that harbored one of his family’s murderers for decades and now refuses to prosecute him for his crimes.
But the Dos Erres decision is also a blow against the international rule of law. Canada’s insistence on imposing administrative sanctions on the accused perpetrators of the most horrifying crimes imaginable undermines the law, damages institutions of justice, and privileges impunity. As one of the countries in the world that embraces universal jurisdiction, Canada’s failure to apply its principles in its own federal courts makes the War Crimes Act a hollow promise.
* * * *
The U.S. documents published today were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive. All of them were used as evidence in the Canadian Dos Erres case.
The Guatemalan documents come from the Archive’s research collection. They were obtained over the years through the Archive’s participation in various Guatemalan human rights criminal investigations and trials. The Canadian prosecutors used these four and 23 additional documents given to them by Guatemala authorities as evidence in the case.
Document 1
The Defense Intelligence Agency periodically produces summary intelligence reports with information on the structure and capabilities of foreign military forces. On page six of this 1980 summary on the Guatemalan military, the DIA provides information on the Kaibil (ranger) counterinsurgency training center, which is located in La Pólvora, in the Péten. The report describes how each of Guatemala's infantry battalions has a Kaibil platoon, “which may be deployed as a separate small unit. These platoons are used as cadre for training other conscripts in insurgency and counterinsurgency techniques and tactics. The Air Force sends personnel to the Kaibil School for survival training.”
The document indicates that it was routine for units of the Guatemalan army to borrow Kaibil platoons for specific actions, just as the Poptún Military Brigade did during the Dos Erres operation.
Document 2
Less than a month before the Dos Erres killings, the DIA reports on the creation of a “strategic reaction force” made up of 20 Kaibil ranger instructors based out of Guatemala City’s Mariscal Zavala Brigade. The special unit was assembled in order to carry out the mission “of quickly deploying to locations throughout the country to seek and destroy guerrilla elements.” The document indicates that the Kaibil unit was placed under direct control of Guatemala’s central military command. It states: “the unit's huge success in previous engagement with the enemy have prompted the Guatemalan Army General Staff (AGS) to assume direct command and control of this unit.”
The document makes clear that this special unit of Kaibil instructors was assembled and mobilized just weeks before the Dos Erres massacre took place.
Document 3
Days after the Dos Erres massacre, the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala messages Washington with information on the counter-terrorist tactical capability of the Guatemalan police and military forces. The cable reports that a Kaibil unit, based in the Mariscal Zavala Brigade headquarters, “has recently been deployed to the Petén, and is now operationally under the Poptún Military Brigade.”
Document 4
As news about Dos Erres begins to surface, U.S. officials look into the matter and report on information obtained through a “reliable embassy source” who told U.S. officials that the Guatemalan army may have massacred 200 villagers in Dos Erres. People from the nearby village of Las Cruces had told the source that a Guatemalan army unit “disguised as guerrillas” had entered the Dos Erres settlement, gathered the people together, and demanded their support. One villager who was beaten but managed to escape later recounted the story to people in Las Cruces. Asked repeatedly who he supported, the man said: “the army,” though “how he knew that the armed men were army disguised as guerrillas is not clear,” according to the cable. Another witness said that the village was now completely deserted and claimed to have found burnt identification cards in the local church. They also claimed that the army had returned to the village a few days later and used military vehicles to take roofing and furniture from the houses to the army base in Las Cruces.
The U.S. Embassy offers possible theories on why no bodies were found and on how the entire Dos Erres population could have just “disappeared.” One possibility was that the army had killed everyone in the village and dumped the bodies into the well. This was based on the testimony of locals who had gone into the village and saw that the well had since been covered over but were afraid to look inside.
The cable, which is signed by the Embassy chargé, goes on to say that because of the reliability of the source, and the seriousness of the allegations, an Embassy officer will travel to the area on December 30, 1982, to investigate the matter in person.
Document 5
On December 30, three mission members from the U.S. Embassy and a Canadian diplomat visited the town of Las Cruces to investigate the allegations of the “Dos R's” massacre. The team verified that “‘Dos Erres’ exists,” noting that it was “not really a village or even a hamlet,” consisting of “scattered houses or groups of houses” that were now deserted with many burnt to the ground.
On the way, mission team members stopped at the Guatemalan Army Base in Poptún, where they spoke with the operations officer (S3), who told them that the area near Las Cruces was exceptionally dangerous because of recent guerrilla activity. Army officials explained how Dos Erres “had suffered from a guerrilla attack in early December” and that it would pose a considerable risk for them to visit the town. From Poptún, the mission members flew directly to the town of Las Cruces (using the directions provided by their source) and then to Dos Erres. When they arrived, however, the helicopter pilot refused to touch down but agreed to sweep low over the area. From this perspective, the Embassy officials could see that houses had been “razed or destroyed by fire.” They then flew back to Las Cruces to speak with locals, including a member of the local civil defense patrol (PAC) and a “confidant of the army in the area.” He told officials that the army was responsible for the disappearance of the people in Dos Erres and that he had been told to keep out of the area in early December, because the army was going to “sweep through.” He also confirmed prior reports that the soldiers wore civilian dress during the sweep but had identifiable army combat boots and Galil rifles. The cable notes that this information matches that of previous source.
Based on the information obtained during their trip, the cable reports that “Embassy must conclude that the party most likely responsible for this incident is the Guatemalan Army.”
Document 6
This intelligence report summarizes the history and status in 1983 of each of the four Guatemalan rebel groups and reviews the military successes of President Ríos Montt against them and their supporters. “Those perceived not to be in support of the government are met with whatever force is considered necessary.” In the section covering the armed group Rebel Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes—FAR), which operated in the Petén, the report’s authors estimate there were just 150-300 combatants at the time but that Guatemalan intelligence nevertheless believed that the “doctrinally pure Marxist-Leninist FAR is potentially the most dangerous” of the guerrilla organizations.
For the purposes of the Canadian case against Sosa Orantes, the report was useful for the link it makes between an ambush carried out by the FAR against army troops in October 1982 that killed more than a dozen soldiers and the attack on Dos Erres two months later. According to the document, following the ambush, “the army responded by burning the homes and crops of two nearby villages. The FAR retaliated with an attack on a neighboring village. The army’s massacre of the people of Los Dos R’s [sic] came shortly after.”
Document 7
This edition of the Diario Oficial de la República de Guatemala—Centro América (the official publication of the decrees, regulations, and public notices of the Guatemalan government, analogous to the Federal Register of the United States) provides the legal framework for the structure, hierarchy and functions of the armed forces of Guatemala in 1968. The document demonstrates that the Guatemalan army had a strictly hierarchical command structure and conformed to detailed rules regarding everything from training, recruitment, promotions and awards, to soldier salaries and vacation benefits. According to the decree, the army’s structure was organized from top to bottom: from the Commander General (President or Chief of State), Minister of Defense, Vice Minister of Defense and Army Chief of Staff, to the Special and Personal General Staffs, Military Commands, Military Services, Centers of Education and Instruction, and other dependencies. Together, the Commander General, the Defense Minister, and the Army Chief of Staff constituted the High Command (Article 12). Members of the army, instructed to be “obedient” (Article 7), included officers, troops, and “specialists” – civilians who sought employment with the institution in their field of specialty (Chapter XXI). The decree also indicated that the country was divided into Military Zones and Military Bases.
Although the army’s Constitutive Law underwent reforms and small changes from time to time, it remained essentially the same between 1944 and 1985. For the purposes of the Canadian case against Jorge Sosa Orantes, this document was useful because it is evidence of the institutional, hierarchical, and highly regulated nature of the Guatemalan army at the time of the Dos Erres massacre.
Document 8
The Manual on Countersubversive Warfare was produced by the Center for Military Studies at the Army Command and General Staff School in 1978 (with later editions issued periodically). Written for training purposes, it was the definitive army doctrine on military operations in unconventional warfare at the time. The Manual established the fundamental policies, directives, guidelines, and definitions required of soldiers to carry out the counterinsurgency campaign and gave extensive and detailed tactical instructions applicable in various combat scenarios that the soldiers might encounter. It made clear in an early chapter that all decisions made about military actions would and must be made within the context of the institutional hierarchy of the armed forces: “It is fundamental that channels of authority at all levels are clearly defined.”
The Manual was created at an early stage of a wave of intense violence and scorched earth operations by Guatemalan security forces that lasted seven years (1978-85), peaking in 1982, the year of the Dos Erres massacre. The document reveals the Guatemalan army’s broad preparedness for countersubversive warfare years before Dos Erres, and maps out basic strategy, command authority, and operational concepts that were still in play when the Kaibiles entered the tiny settlement in El Petén on December 6, 1982, and slaughtered its residents. Its precepts help explain how the conditions for scorched earth operations targeting civilian populations were created. The Manual states, for example, that the objective of countersubversive operations (as opposed to conventional warfare) is to destroy the internal enemy, defined as “followers of international communism,” but also “Individuals, groups or organizations that are not communist but try to break the established order…” It was a category so broad as to give the army maximum flexibility in targeting those they perceived as a threat. According to the Manual, countersubversive warfare was “total, permanent and universal” and considered civilians as a potential danger, “because…the population is converted [by the guerrillas] into an objective and an environment within which they develop their activities” (554).
The Manual also established the system that the military used to divide the country into “three classes of zones,” according to the level of subversive penetration and threat to the established order: “red, where the subversive movement effectively controls the population and develops guerrilla operations; pink, in which they are trying to extend their movement…; [and] white, not yet affected, but already under threat…” (592). The military’s classification system would endure throughout the armed conflict and had direct implications for Dos Erres, which the army considered a red zone.
The Manual was clear in its description of how the army was to handle a “red zone”: the goal was the “destruction or expulsion of armed subversive elements.” Anticipating tactics used at Dos Erres, the Manual promoted encircling the targeted area, preferably at night to retain the element of surprise, then going in for the kill. “The circle constitutes the ideal procedure for the holding of an identified guerrilla force, then comes the destruction” (617). The Manuel recognized the likely outcome that would result in countersubversive actions within the red zones: “Given that the operations during this first phase are principally military in character, it is inevitable that they will wreak havoc…”
Document 9
Campaign Plan Victoria 82 is a document drawn up by the military under General Efraín Ríos Montt directing officers to launch a series of counterinsurgency operations in strategic locations around the country. It represented the centerpiece of the Guatemalan army’s counterinsurgency strategy during the Ríos Montt government. It is key to understanding how the armed forces aimed to manage the conflict during 1982: through a mixture of military attacks in the countryside where guerrilla combatants moved, counterterror operations targeting the insurgency’s leadership in Guatemala City and other urban centers, and civic actions designed to win the hearts and minds of civilians. It was an important document for the Canadian case against Sosa Orantes because it is evidence that, at the time of the Dos Erres massacre, the Guatemalan armed forces were operating around the country under orders from the Army General Staff, with a strong, functioning chain of command and well-developed reporting requirements. Plan Victoria is proof that the Kaibil special forces who entered Dos Erres on December 6, 1982, were not a rogue unit killing people for sport, but part of a planned national military strategy.
It is clear from Plan Victoria that military operations inside the Petén – and specifically in the region encompassing Dos Erres – were considered an integral part of Ríos Montt’s counterinsurgency assault. Among the map overlays referenced on the Plan’s first page is La Libertad, the municipality that included Dos Erres, and its nearest army detachment, Las Cruces, indicating that the army considered it a priority. Military Brigade “General Luis García León” (GLGL) in Poptún (later known as Military Zone 23) is one of the commands named by the Plan to receive five extra rifle companies (1,000 troops) for the planned surge (144). The Army General Staff also allocated the GLGL Brigade extra military rations, uniforms, weapons and ammunition for use in the assault (168). Santa Elena Air Force Base in Flores, Petén, was ordered to provide tactical and logistic support – not only to the GLGL Brigade, but “for the different activities carried out in the Kaibil School” as well (70).
Plan Victoria established command responsibilities at the brigade level in assigned “Areas of Operations.” Commanders were given the freedom to tailor their operations within their area of responsibility “according to intelligence and the actual situation.” At the same time, the Plan required commanders to coordinate their movements at all times. It reminded unit leaders of their obligation to report their plans to the Defense Ministry on a regular, scheduled basis, and directed them to “maintain permanent communication with the Army General Staff.” These and other orders concerning unit reporting and transmission requirements indicate that the High Command was likely aware of troop movements and operations during counterinsurgency assaults in real time.
In sum, Plan Victoria makes clear that the Kaibil special forces unit that committed the massacre at Dos Erres (with support from the Military Brigade GLGL, or Military Zone 23) did so on orders from superior officers and in constant communication with the Army General Staff in Guatemala City. The document eliminates the possibility that the massacre was an impulsive or unplanned encounter.
Document 10
These are two documents: The first is a partial copy of Campaign Plan “Firmeza 83-1,” a supplement to the original Campaign Plan Firmeza 83.[12] Although the Plan refers several times to the need to “normalize” the military institution following the surge of 1982 (by returning temporary troops to their units of origin), soldiers are nevertheless ordered to maintain pressure on the guerrillas. They should “locate and destroy enemy forces with all their strength and military capacity, supporting their operations with the greatest number of PADCIL [Civil Defense Patrol] elements in order to lay waste to collective crops that the subversives possess in determined areas where they have fully enlisted the active participation and the collaboration of committed Villages that sympathize with and are organized by the subversives” (4).
Just as Campaign Plan “Victoria 82” did, Firmeza 83-1 insisted on control over military developments in the field by the National Defense General Staff, required regular reporting by unit leaders to the High Command, and ordered all communications, reports and requests for support to flow through the Joint Operations Center (Centro de Operaciones Conjuntas—COC) based in Guatemala City. The directives are reminders that counterinsurgency operations throughout the country were ordered, overseen, and monitored by the armed forces High Command at all times.
But Firmeza 83-1 also represented the evolution of the government’s counterinsurgency strategy by mid-1983. Whereas Victoria 82 emphasized combat operations to hunt down and “eliminate” guerrilla forces and their perceived civilian collaborators, Firmeza 83-1 reflects a growing frustration with the failure of military action alone to quell the insurgency. The plan states that combat with a persistent enemy had caused “premature exhaustion” among government troops; emphasizes the need for “physical and psychological control” of the civilian population in order to isolate the guerrillas; and directs local commanders to stimulate the village Civil Defense Patrols to “collaborate to the maximum in the destruction and annihilation of subversive groups,” as a way of involving civilians in the fight. Campaign Plan “Firmeza 83-1” was significant for Canada’s case against Jorge Sosa Orantes because it describes the continuity and logical progression of the army’s counterinsurgency operations after the Dos Erres massacre.
The second document, Appendix “1” (Intelligence), is a summary of military intelligence on guerrilla combat strength. In the section concerning the Rebel Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes—FAR) – the insurgency organization that operated in the northern department of El Petén, where Dos Erres was – the FAR is described as having carried out intensive political and military work throughout the region during 1979-82. In particular, the FAR managed to ambush a military patrol from the Poptún base, killing soldiers and seizing almost two dozen weapons, ammunition and other equipment – what the document calls “the strongest blow against the Guatemalan Army.” The soldiers’ deaths and the theft of their rifles have been considered one of the motives for the army’s decision to send the Kaibiles into Dos Erres.
Document 11
This is the ruling issued by Judge Roger R. Lafrenière on February 5, 2026, which determined that Sosa obtained his Canadian citizenship by false representation or fraud. Sosa was also declared inadmissible to Canada on grounds of violating human or international rights for committing an act outside Canada that constitutes a crime against humanity.
Document 12-1
In 2023, a Guatemalan court found three former Kaibiles – Gilberto Jordan, José Mardoqueo Ortiz Morales, and Alfonso Bulux Vicente – not guilty of committing murder and crimes against humanity in the Dos Erres massacre. The ruling marked the first acquittal issued in Guatemala for defendants accused of participating in the massacre and represented a major backsliding in justice efforts for victims and their relatives.
Document 12-2
See description of document 12-1
[1] Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), Guatemala: Memory of Silence (New York: UNOPS, 1999), “Conclusions and Recommendations”
[2] CEH, Tomo VI, Anexo I, Caso Ilustrativo No. 31, “Masacre de las Dos Erres.” See also Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Case of the “Las Dos Erres” Massacre v. Guatemala, 29 November 2009
[3] Related to the testimony of expert Dr. Elizabeth A. Oglesby, pp 65-72
[4] Related to the testimony of expert Gen. (retired) Rodolfo Robles, pp 72-79
[5] Related to the testimony of expert Kate Doyle, pp 79-89
[6] Related to the testimony of expert Dr. Silvana Turner, pp 89-95
[7] Testimony of Fabio Pinzón, pp 95-103
[8] Testimony of Ramiro Osorio Cristales, pp 103-106
[9] Lafontaine’s article is titled “The Unbearable Lightness of International Obligations: When and How to Exercise Jurisdiction Under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act”
[10] In 2014, Spain’s Parliament passed reforms to the Spanish Judicial Act that effectively eliminated universal jurisdiction, thereby nullifying the extradition request for Sosa Orantes
[11] Porras herself has been designated by the U.S. Department of State as a “corrupt and undemocratic actor” and was sanctioned by both the United States and Great Britain.
[12] The copy is missing sections. Page 24 is missing (it appears to be the first page of Annex “A,” Organization for Combat), and only three out of nine Annexes listed at the end of the document are included: Annex “A,” Annex "F" (Psychological Operations Plan), and Annex "G" (Civil Affairs Plan). None of the five Appendices listed at the end of the document are included.