Washington, DC, March 28, 2013 – A radio program on the Dos Erres massacre in Guatemala in 1982, which featured National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle, won a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award yesterday. The program originally aired on May 25, 2012, as part of "This American Life" from WBEZ, and was a collaboration with Pro Publica and Fundacion MEPI.
Washington, D.C., March 19, 2013 – The groundbreaking genocide trial of Efraнn Rнos Montt, retired army general and former dictator of Guatemala, opens today with the presentation of the prosecution's first witnesses. The trial will take place despite repeated efforts by defense lawyers to halt the proceedings with legal appeals and a bid for amnesty. On March 12, the Constitutional Court rejected the amnesty request once and for all, clearing the way for the trial to begin.
Washington, D.C., May 3, 2012 – On April 25, 2012, Kate Doyle, senior analyst and director of the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, provided expert witness testimony before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of the Diario Militar (Case 12.590, Gudiel Бlvarez et al. (Diario Militar) vs. Guatemala) during the Court's 45th Extraordinary Session held in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Doyle's prepared testimony was followed by questioning by the Petitioners' legal representatives, and nearly 45 minutes of questioning by the seven judges.
Washington, DC, March 23, 2012 -- Today marks the 30th anniversary of the coup that propelled General Efraín Ríos Montt to power and launched the most violent period of the 36-year internal armed conflict in Guatemala. The National Security Archive and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) mark the coup anniversary with the publication today of NACLA Report on the Americas, “Central America: Legacies of War,” containing feature article by National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle on “Justice in Guatemala.”
Washington, DC, February 3, 2012- Kate Doyle, director of the Evidence Project at the National Security Archive, and Fredy Peccerelli, the forensic anthropologist of the Fundaciуn de Antropologнa Forense de Guatemala, have won the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive (ALBA) and Puffin Foundation Award for Human Rights Activism, one of the world's largest prizes in the field of human rights. Doyle and Peccerelli have worked for twenty years to bring to light evidence of genocide in Guatemala.
Washington, D.C., November 22, 2011 - The bodies of two men whose disappearance in 1984 was recorded in the notorious Guatemalan "death squad diary" have been located on a former military base outside the capital and positively identified through DNA testing, according to the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, which announced its findings in a press conference this morning. The remains belong to Amancio Samuel Villatoro and Sergio Saъl Linares Morales, both captured by security forces in separate incidents and never seen by their families again.
Guatemala City, Guatemala, June 7, 2011 - This text is a copy of the speech given by Kate Doyle at the ceremony of the presentation of the report, "From Silence to Memory: Revelations of the Historical Archive of the National Police" at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Washington, D.C., February 18, 2011 - Twenty-seven years ago today, Guatemalan labor activist Edgar Fernando Garcнa was shot and kidnapped by government security forces off a street in downtown Guatemala City. He was never seen again. In recognition of the anniversary of his disappearance, the National Security Archive today posts the complete text of the historic ruling issued last October by a Guatemalan court that convicted two former policemen to 40 years in prison for the crime, as well as key documents from the Guatemalan National Police Archive that were used in the prosecution.
Washington, DC, January 28, 2011 - A new documentary film about human rights in Guatemala featuring National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, will be screened tonight at the Sundance Resort where Kate Doyle, Almudena Bernabeu of the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), and film makers Pamela Yates, Paco de Onнs and Peter Kinoy, will attend the screening and speak to the audience after the film.
Washington, D.C. - January 20, 2011 - Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes was arrested in Alberta, Canada on January 18, 2011 on charges of naturalization fraud in the United States. Sosa Orantes, 52, is a former commanding officer of the Guatemalan Special Forces, or Kaibil unit, which brutally murdered more than 250 men, women and children during the 1982 massacre in Dos Erres, Guatemala. Sosa Orantes, a resident of Riverside County, California where he was a well known martial arts instructor, was arrested near the home of a relative in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.