Authorities arrested nine suspects on Friday, including five police officers, in the killing of a prominent lawyer who accused Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom of involvement in his death in a posthumously released video.
The arrests were announced by a special investigation group known as the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, which was invited by the government to probe the May 10 murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg.
“The result [of the investigation] is not a product of the imagination, nor a matter of leaks or witnesses, because we don’t have a single witness,” said Carlos Castrensana, a Spaniard who is head of the commission. “But it is unquestionable because it is accompanied by overwhelming scientific evidence.”
PHOTO: AFP
The five officers arrested on Friday are members of the national police force. The other two suspects are a former police officer and a former soldier. Castrensana said investigators identified the suspects through security camera footage showing a vehicle believed to contain Rosenberg’s killers.
The commission said another set of suspects planned and ordered the killing, but it did not release their names or a possible motive to avoid compromising the investigation.
Police later arrested two other suspects who allegedly belonged to the same group as the previous seven, but did not specify what role they allegedly played in the crime.
In a video that surfaced after the murder, Rosenberg is seen looking into the camera and saying: “If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Alvaro Colom.”
Rosenberg, a 47-year-old corporate lawyer with degrees from Harvard and Cambridge who served as assistant dean at a private university, claimed Colom’s government was linked to a corruption scandal at a government bank and said any attack on him would be an attempt to cover that up.
His accusations were distributed to reporters on DVDs at his May 11 funeral and immediately set an already polarized country into a frenzy of protests, allegations of corruption and calls for Colom’s resignation.
The president denied any involvement and his government has suggested that criminal or political interests were behind the video.
“The interior minister informed me that [the suspects were] a well-organized gang that had been operating for some time,” Colom said on Friday after the arrests were announced.
He expressed confidence that investigators would get to the bottom of the case.
Rosenberg’s death became a rallying cry for members of Guatemala’s dominant elite, many of whom are angry over Colom’s attempts to eliminate tax loopholes for corporations and criticize his inability to reduce high rates of violent crime.
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