[Al Jazeera] Guatemalan judges have unanimously ruled that the country's military carried out genocide and crimes against humanity, but in a 2-1 decision acquitted former intelligence chief Jose Mauricio Rodriguez of all charges. According to the decision, handed down late on Wednesday, there was no evidence Rodriguez was involved in or ordered others to take part in the genocide during the country's decades-long armed conflict.
Over the course of the war, which began in 1960 and formally ended in 1996, more than 200,000 people were killed and another 43,000 were forcibly disappeared. More than 80 percent of the victims were indigenous Maya people. The worst of the atrocities took place in the Maya Ixil region, 225km northwest of Guatemala City.
"Inhuman acts were committed against the civilian population," said tribunal president Maria Eugenia Castellanos.
"We are moved," she added, referring to the countless survivors' testimonies of military forces carrying out killings, massacres, rape, theft of children, bombing, displacement and forced starvation.