A former Guatemalan sergeant who acknowledged participating in a massacre in 1982 during the country's civil war was deported Tuesday by U.S. authorities.
Gilberto Jordan, 64, is the third former Guatemalan soldier to be deported to face war crime charges for that massacre, said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a statement.
In the U.S., Jordan pleaded guilty to making false statements on his U.S. naturalization forms, hiding his service in the military and involvement in the killings. His U.S. citizenship was revoked, and he served 10 years in federal prison.
U.S. officials say the Guatemalan government accuses Jordan of being among some 20 members of an elite Guatemalan force known as the “kaibiles” who murdered 200 men, women and children in the hamlet of Dos Erres in 1982.
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The slaughter was part of an effort to eliminate communities supporting insurgent groups at the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war. They were searching for missing rifles believed stolen by guerrillas, then decided to kill the villagers after some of the soldiers began raping the women.
Jordan acknowledged participating in the killings and personally throwing a young child down a well. He testified against a fellow former soldier in a California trial in 2013.
Jordan went to the U.S. illegally in 1985 and eventually settled in Boca Raton, Florida, where he worked at a country club as a cook before his arrest in 2010.
U.S. & World
The 1982 slaughter went unpunished for years — even after Guatemalan authorities issued 17 arrest warrants. Prosecutors say six former soldiers have now been convicted in the deaths.
The civil war from 1960 to 1996 left 200,000 people dead and 45,000 missing, a United Nations report says. The document says that army and paramilitary groups were responsible for at least 97% of the deaths, while the rest is attributed to the insurgent groups.
