PBS NewsHour Reports on How Forensic Science is Being Used in Guatemalan Genocide Trial

For years, General Jose Efrain Rios Montt, who led Guatemala’s government during a turbulent and bloody civil war in the early 1980’s, avoided war crime charges because he continued to hold congressional office, and therefore had legal immunity.  But that immunity expired in 2012 when his term ran out and a judge ruled the now 86 year old Rios Montt should stand trial – making him the first former head of state to face genocide charges in his home country.

PBS NewsHour Science Correspondent Miles O’Brien reports from Guatemala Wednesday, May 8, 2013 (check local listings) on how scientists are employing the latest in forensic technology to gather evidence from events that took place over 30 years ago.

Using DNA extracted from over 6,500 bodies unearthed from clandestine graves and software developed to identify 9/11 attack victims, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation has identified hundreds of victims by comparing the genes of the remains to relatives who lost their loved ones during the civil war.  “These are the bones and skeletons talking from the grave and telling the judges what happened to them,” Forensic Anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli told O’Brien.

Rios Montt’s supporters, including his daughter Zury Rios Montt, the wife of former US congressman Jerry Weller, insist the scientists are either imprecise or wrong, that there is no way to link the deaths to her father.  Furthermore, Ms. Rios Montt claims, “in Guatemala, there was no genocide during any regime.“

But the anthropologists are not the only ones gathering evidence.  Together with producer Xeni Jardin, O’Brien sought out and interviewed experts from the many scientific fields who are testifying in the trial, including experts in geomatics – the science of gathering, analyzing and interpreting geographic information – who are using satellite imagery from the time period to document what they say are massive, deliberately set fires; a statistician who compared homicide rates to determine if those killed were merely random casualties of war as the defense claims; an archivist who has taken millions of documents about the war and scanned them into a searchable online database open to the public; and a documentary film maker who interviewed Gen. Montt at the time of the killings.

In addition to the report on PBS NewsHour, more information will be available on our Science page: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/topic/science/

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