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Edgar Fernando García was 26 years old, an engineering student, labor activist and member of the clandestine Guatemalan Workers’ Party (PGT) when he was seized by police agents off a street in Guatemala City and taken away forever. His disappearance left his young wife, Nineth Montenegro de García, and an 18-month-old daughter behind. It was February 18, 1984.
On October 18, 2010, the trial of two policemen accused of participating in Fernando García’s abduction began inside a crowded courtroom on the 14th floor of the “Tribunals Tower” in downtown Guatemala City. By 9:00 a.m., when the proceedings got underway, people had filled the fifty seats available in the spectators’ gallery, with those unlucky enough to have arrived late lining the walls and crowding each other in the room’s single doorway. Behind a wooden barrier separating the audience from the court, three judges sat at a table on a raised dais overlooking the scene. To their right sat the defendants and their attorneys. To their left sat the prosecution, including the García family’s choice for “querellante adhesivo,” or “private prosecutor”: attorney Alejandra García, Fernando’s daughter. (more…)
