GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - A former Guatemalan soldier suspected of helping carry out a massacre during the country’s civil war was deported Wednesday by U.S. authorities.
Santos Lopez Alonzo is one of four such former soldiers arrested by U.S. authorities since 2010. They were wanted on allegations of participating in the killing of more than 200 people in the village of Las Dos Erres in 1982.
The slaughter went unpunished for years - even after Guatemalan authorities issued 17 arrest warrants. In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights demanded the country prosecute the perpetrators.
Four former soldiers were sentenced in 2011 to more than 6,000 years for the killings. A year later, another suspect deported by the U.S. was sentenced.
Here is more about the three other former soldiers who were arrested by the U.S.:
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GILBERTO JORDAN
He was arrested in Florida in 2010 and pleaded guilty to making false statements on his U.S. naturalization forms. His American citizenship was revoked, and he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
Jordan acknowledged participating in the killings and personally throwing a young child down a well in Las Dos Erres. He later testified against fellow former soldier Jorge Sosa Orantes at his California trial.
Jordan went to the U.S. illegally in 1985. He eventually settled in Boca Raton and worked as a cook at a country club.
He was expected to face deportation after finishing his U.S. prison sentence.
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JORGE SOSA ORANTES
He was arrested in Canada in 2011 and extradited to California, where he stood trial for lying about the massacre on his naturalization forms.
He was convicted in 2013, sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and stripped of his U.S. citizenship.
Sosa left Guatemala in 1985 and sought asylum in the United States, claiming he was fleeing guerrillas. When he was denied, he went to Canada, where he became a citizen. He later married an American, got a green card and applied to naturalize in 2007.
Sosa had been working as a martial arts instructor in Riverside County. Federal authorities searched his home in 2010 but he had left for Mexico and later Canada, where he was arrested on U.S. charges.
He was a second lieutenant in the army during the massacre. At Sosa’s trial, Jordan testified that Sosa fired his rifle and threw a grenade at villagers who screamed from within a well.
Sosa is expected to be deported after his U.S. prison sentence ends.
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PEDRO PIMENTEL RIOS
He lived in Santa Ana, California, and worked at a sweater factory for years until he was arrested by immigration authorities in 2010.
He fought his deportation, saying he feared he would not be given a fair trial. But he was sent back to Guatemala the following year.
In 2012, he was sentenced to more than 6,000 years in prison for the killings.
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