Image copyright AFP Image caption A genocide trial involving Efrain Rios Montt resumed behind closed doors last year

Guatemala's former military leader Efrain Rios Montt, who briefly ruled the country in the 1980s, has died at the age of 91.

In 2013, he became the first former head of state to face genocide charges in his own country.

Gen Rios Montt was accused of ordering the killing of more than 1,700 ethnic Mayans during a civil war.

The last several years of his life were spent fighting a legal battle against the allegations in court.

Gen Rios Montt seized power during a 1982 coup d'etat, in the midst of a bloody civil war in the country between the military regime and Marxist rebels.

His 17 months in office were considered some of the most ruthless of the war, with entire towns of indigenous Mayans - who were accused of harbouring insurgents - wiped out.

Guatemala's civil war 1960-1996

The conflict pitted left-wing, mostly Mayan insurgents against the state

The Guatemalan government, backed by the US, waged a vicious campaign to eliminate the guerrillas

More than 200,000 people, most of them indigenous Mayan civilians, were killed or disappeared

Gen Rios Montt was ousted as leader by his own defence minister in August 1983, who declared an amnesty for guerrillas.

He avoided prosecution by entering the country's Congress, which offered parliamentary immunity.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption He was accused of orchestrating a violent protest during the 2003 campaign

He would later return to the political limelight in 2003 and 2006, when he unsuccessfully ran for president despite a constitutional rule that no-one who had overthrown a government could stand for the office.

After his congressional immunity ended with his congressional title, he was eventually brought to trial.

National prosecutors said that during his 17 months in power the former leader and his chief of military intelligence ordered the deaths of more than 1,700 people from the Ixil Maya ethnic group.

He was found guilty of charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in a national court in 2013.

A judge sentenced him to 80 years, but that ruling was later thrown out by the country's high court.

Legal battles over whether he was fit to stand for retrial endured throughout 2015.

His trial eventually resumed in October last year behind closed doors and in special conditions because of his deteriorating mental health.

Gen Rios Montt's lawyer told the AP news agency he died on Sunday morning of a heart attack.</s>April 2 (UPI) -- Former Guatemalan dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt, who was tried for genocide five years ago, has died at the age of 91.

Rios Montt died of a heart attack Sunday at his home, attorney Jaime Hernandez said.

After assuming control of Guatemala's government in a 1982 military coup, Rios Montt's 17-month administration presided over a country divided by a bloody civil war. He was brought to trial that year for the murders of nearly 1,200 Ixil Indians in Guatemala's Quiche state.

The retired general was convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison.

The ruling was overturned 10 days later by the country's Constitutional Court due to a procedural error, but it made Rios Montt the first head of state to be convicted of genocide in his own country.

Rios Montt's attorneys successfully blocked further judicial proceedings by listing dementia among several of his illnesses.

Because of the offices he held, he was entitled to lie in state at the Legislative Palace in Guatemala City, the country's Congress said. Instead, Rios Montt's family chose to hold a private burial on Sunday in a local cemetery.

Rios Montt was Guatemala's president from March 1982 to August 1983. He was removed from office in another coup d'etat by Defense Minister Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores. He unsuccessfully attempted to regain the presidency in 2003 and was elected to Guatemalan Congress in 2007, which granted him immunity from prosecution.

Once his congressional term ended in 2012, and his immunity ended, he was indicted on war crimes charges. A retrial began in 2015 after his conviction was overturned, but a Guatemalan court ruled he could not be sentenced due to his deteriorating health.</s>Former Guatemalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt died at the age of 91 on Sunday, a bitterly divisive figure in the country's long civil war who escaped a 2013 genocide conviction only to face renewed charges last year.

GUATEMALA CITY: Former Guatemalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt died at the age of 91 on Sunday, a bitterly divisive figure in the country's long civil war who escaped a 2013 genocide conviction only to face renewed charges last year.

At the time of his death, which his lawyer Luis Rosales announced, Rios Montt was again on trial for genocide for his role during one of the bloodiest phases of the Cold War-era conflict that lasted from 1960 until 1996.

"He died facing justice," said on Twitter Claudia Paz y Paz, a former Guatemalan attorney general who was instrumental in bringing charges against members of the military accused of committing atrocities during the civil war.

"Thank you to the survivors for their dignity and bravery. May it never happen again," Paz y Paz added.

Ruling Guatemala from 1982 to 1983, Rios Montt was in 2013 convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, to the relief of many victims' families. Then, barely a week later, judges at the country's top court threw out the sentence.

President Jimmy Morales, whose party has strong ties to the military, expressed his condolences to Rios Montt's family, while other leaders on the right also paid their respects.

Former conservative President Alfonso Portillo, a party colleague of Rios Montt's who was convicted of money laundering in 2014, said he had valued the retired general as a friend.

"I learnt a lot from him and his life is part of our history," he said, noting the two had also their differences.

An evangelical Protestant, Rios Montt served in Congress for nearly two decades and stepped down in 2012, putting an end to the immunity he enjoyed by law as a public official.

A Guatemalan court in January 2012 charged him for conceiving a counterinsurgency plan that killed at least 1,771 members of the Ixil tribe and displaced thousands more.

His lawyer Rosales said on Sunday that Rios Montt maintained he was innocent of genocide until the end.

An estimated 200,000, mostly Maya civilians were killed during the war, and a further 45,000 went missing.

Born on June 16, 1926 in Guatemala's rural western highland department of Huehuetenango, Rios Montt took part in the 1954 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed military coup that ousted democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz, who was seen by the United States as a communist sympathizer.

Rios Montt was a general by 1972 and two years later ran for the presidency. He lost and went to Spain, serving as military attache, then returned to Guatemala in 1977. In March 1982, he headed a junta which removed President Angel Guevara from power.

Rios Montt was diagnosed with senile dementia in 2015, and a new genocide trial overseen by a Supreme Court tribunal began against him in 2017. The process was ongoing when he died.

Hector Reyes, a lawyer for victims' families, said the genocide trial would continue because another general, Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, was still facing charges. Rios Montt's death meant that he was no longer part of the process, he added.

Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan activist and Nobel peace laureate who fought for victims of the conflict, said the death of the general would now give some a measure of closure.

"Either way, for us, the victims, he has already been judged, and the crimes have been set out," she said.</s>GUATEMALA CITY- Former Guatemalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt died at the age of 91 on Sunday, a bitterly divisive figure in the country’s long civil war who escaped a 2013 genocide conviction only to face renewed charges last year.

Guatemalan military officers carry the coffin containing the body of former Guatemalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt, during his funeral at the cemetery in Guatemala City on April 1, 2018. Luis Echeverria / Reuters

At the time of his death, which his lawyer, Luis Rosales, announced, Rios Montt was again on trial for genocide for his role during one of the bloodiest phases of the Cold War-era conflict that lasted from 1960 until 1996.

“He died facing justice,” tweeted Claudia Paz y Paz, a former Guatemalan attorney general who was instrumental in bringing charges against members of the military accused of committing atrocities during the civil war.

“Thank you to the survivors for their dignity and bravery. May it never happen again,” Paz y Paz added.

Ruling Guatemala from 1982 to 1983, Rios Montt was convicted in 2013 of genocide and crimes against humanity, to the relief of many victims’ families. Barely a week later, judges on the country’s top court threw out the sentence.

Rios Montt was buried in the afternoon at an upscale cemetery of Guatemala City known as La Villa de Guadalupe in a closed ceremony attended by military officials, close friends and relatives, including his daughter Zury and widow Teresa.

Zury, a conservative politician, gave a brief eulogy to her father, calling him “general of generals” and a “great political leader and an upstanding man” to applause and shouts of “Viva Rios Montt!” from mourners, broadcasts on local media showed.

A few protesters gathered outside the National Palace in a square in Guatemala City holding placards saying: “There will be no forgiveness.”

On the square, they painted in red letters: “Rios Montt genocidal killer the people do not forgive, do not forget.”

President Jimmy Morales, whose party has strong ties to the military, expressed his condolences to Rios Montt’s family in a brief statement. Other leaders on the right also paid their respects.

Former conservative President Alfonso Portillo, a party colleague of Rios Montt’s who was convicted of money laundering in 2014, said he had valued the retired general as a friend.

“I learnt a lot from him and his life is part of our history,” he said, noting the two also had their differences.

An evangelical Protestant, Rios Montt served in Congress for nearly two decades and stepped down in 2012, putting an end to the immunity he enjoyed by law as a public official.

His lawyer Rosales said on Sunday that Rios Montt maintained he was innocent of genocide until the end.

An estimated 200,000, mostly Maya civilians were killed during the war, and a further 45,000 went missing.

Born on June 16, 1926, in Guatemala’s rural western highland department of Huehuetenango, Rios Montt took part in the 1954 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed military coup that ousted democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz, who was seen by the United States as a communist sympathizer.

Rios Montt was a general by 1972 and ran for the presidency two years later. He lost and went to Spain, serving as military attache, then returned to Guatemala in 1977. In March 1982, he headed a junta that removed President Angel Guevara from power.

Rios Montt was diagnosed with senile dementia in 2015, and a new genocide trial overseen by a Supreme Court tribunal began against him in 2017. The process was ongoing when he died.

Hector Reyes, a lawyer for victims’ families, said the genocide trial would continue because another general, Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, was still facing charges. Rios Montt’s death meant he was no longer part of the process, he added.

Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan activist and Nobel Peace laureate who fought for victims of the conflict, said the death of the general would give some a measure of closure.

“Either way, for us, the victims, he has already been judged, and the crimes have been set out,” she said.</s>The ex-Guatemalan president Efraín Ríos Montt died of heart failure on Sunday aged 91, media reported citing the former general's lawyer.

The retired general was sentenced to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity in 2013 over the alleged involvement in the murder of 1771 Mayan people.

TWEET: Attorney Luis Rosales confirms that Ríos Montt died at 6:00 am on Sunday

However, the ruling was overturned by the Constitutional Court, according to El Periódico. However, the trial was resumed in October 2017; it was held behind closed doors.

The Guatemalan Civil War that lasted from 1960 to 1996 claimed lives of up to 200,000 people.

The pictures emerged on the web showing people bringing flowers to the doors of the house where the former leader lived.</s>Efraín Ríos Montt ex-dictator of Guatemala and notorious military general who was convicted of genocide, has died at 91, a family spokesman, Luis Rosales, confirmed Sunday.

Rosales told CNN that a wake is being held for the former president at his home Sunday, and a funeral will be held on the same day at cemetery La Villa de Guadalupe in Guatemala City.

The former president died of a heart attack, and also had dementia and suffered from heart and lung problems, according to The New York Times.

Ríos Montt governed for 17 months between 1982 and 1983. He was found to be the mastermind behind the murder of 1,771 indigenous Ixil people, as well as the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 people perpetrated by the military during the Central American country’s decades-long civil war.

He was convicted of those crimes in May 2013 and was sentenced to 80 years in prison, but the verdict was annulled 10 days later.

A Guatemalan judge ruled that Ríos Montt knew of the massacres and aerial bombardment of fleeing rebels, but the former president maintained his innocence during the trial.

A new trial in January 2015 was suspended hours before it began.

In August 2015, a Guatemalan court determined that the ex-dictator would stand trial for genocide and crimes against humanity, according to the Interior Ministry. But the court decided the it would be a special trial because the general, 89 at the time, had dementia.

Despite his role in the massacres, Ríos Montt was seen as an ally by then President Ronald Reagan, who said the general was getting a “bum rap on human rights,” the Times reported.

The general was seen as a hero to many who believed his policy helped keep Guatemala from falling to communist threats in the region.

Ríos Montt is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter. Another son was killed in the war in 1982, according to the Times.</s>Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in a 1982 coup and presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's civil war, in which soldiers waged a scorched-earth campaign to root out Marxist guerrillas, died on Sunday, his lawyers said.

Efrain Rios Montt, the Guatemalan military dictator who was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed by his troops during the country’s long-running civil war, died April 1 in Guatemala City. He was 91.

The retired brigadier general, said to be suffering from dementia, spent the last several years of his life consumed by legal battles stemming from his short but barbarous resign as the country’s leader. His lawyer Jaime Hernandez told The Associated Press he suffered a heart attack.

Rios Montt assumed power March 23, 1982, in a coup staged by junior officers. Guatemala was long familiar with rule by military strongmen and human-rights abuses. But during Rios Montt’s 17-month reign, repression by state security forces reached new levels of brutality.

A United Nations-sponsored truth commission found that nearly half of all the human-rights violations during the 36-year conflict occurred in 1982, a year when Rios Montt was de facto ruler of Guatemala for nine months. More than 200,000 Guatemalans perished during the civil war’s violence, according to the U.N. commission, and government forces were responsible for the vast majority of deaths.

An evangelical Christian and part-time lay preacher, Rios Montt befriended televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Robertson extolled the Guatemalan leader, the lone Protestant head of state in Latin America, as the only alternative to “the oppression of corrupt oligarchies and the tyranny of Russian-backed Communist totalitarianism.” To his fiercest critics, the general was known as “the born-again butcher.”

Initially, Rios Montt enjoyed broad support by vowing to bring order to a nation where, as in much of Central America during the Cold War, Marxist guerrillas had risen up against military regimes. His draconian plan called for depopulating rebel strongholds to deny the guerrillas civilian support.

“The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea,” Rios Montt declared shortly after taking power. “If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea.”

Under Rios Montt’s command, the armed forces destroyed nearly 600 villages in the northern highlands and killed thousands of innocent civilians, according to the U.N. truth commission report published in 1999. Most of the victims were Mayan Indians who make up about half of Guatemala’s population.

Entire hamlets were uprooted and forced into “model villages,” many of which functioned as army-controlled re-education camps. Thousands of families fled to Mexico. Fueling the upheaval was a program that conscripted young men into self-defense patrols that often committed their own atrocities.

Guatemala under Rios Montt, said former foreign minister Edgar Gutierrez, “was like Cambodia under Pol Pot.”

The general brushed off the bloodshed. “I was not a police officer. I was a head of state,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. “I am the one responsible, I recognize that, but I am not the guilty party.”

He turned the tide in the war. The country’s four main guerrilla groups suffered massive losses and never recovered. They disarmed under a 1996 peace process that ended the war.

Although his brutality was condemned by many foreign governments, Rios Montt had Washington on his side.

Keen to help crush Cuban- and Soviet-backed insurgencies in Central America, President Ronald Reagan channeled military aid to Guatemala and praised Rios Montt for being “totally dedicated to democracy.”

Within Guatemala, doubts about the dictator were growing.

Rios Montt upset civilian leaders by banning political parties and becoming increasingly vague about leaving power. He also angered the military brass by ignoring hierarchy and promoting officers who belonged to a Guatemalan offshoot of the Gospel Outreach Church of Eureka, California, an evangelical Protestant sect that the general had joined.

Rios Montt was ousted in a coup led by his former defense minister on Aug. 8, 1983.

Years later, as the war wound down and the country returned to an elected government, Guatemalans complained of street crime and corruption by traditional politicians. Their frustration opened the door for Rios Montt, who had formed a populist party that stressed law and order and individual responsibility.

With support from many of the Mayan regions that had been ravaged by his troops, Rios Montt was elected to Congress in 1990 and eventually rose to become president of the legislature.

In fact, polls at the time indicated that he stood a strong chance of returning to the National Palace had it not been for a constitutional provision banning people who had participated in coups from running for president.

In a 1991 essay, David M. Stoll, a Middlebury College anthropologist, tried to explain the general’s enduring attraction. He wrote: “The authoritarianism which foreigners so hold against Rios Montt appeals to the many Guatemalans … who, shaking their heads at the latest outrage, are willing to say: ‘We need a strongman to control us.’ Here is, they say, a just military man, even as they fear and despise the army for all the killing it has done.”

Support for Rios Montt collapsed in the early 2000s when President Alfonso Portillo — who belonged to the general’s party and was widely considered his stand-in — was accused of corruption and money laundering.

By then, Rios Montt had also become the target of lawsuits accusing him of war crimes and genocide, including one filed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, a Mayan Indian activist whose parents and brother were killed by Guatemalan security forces.

The legal cases languished, in part, because Rios Montt enjoyed immunity as a member of Congress. But on Jan. 27, 2012, shortly after the general’s retirement from Congress, a Guatemalan judge ruled that he bore chain-of-command responsibility for massive violations and must stand trial.

On May 10, 2013, he was found guilty of the slaughter of 1,771 members of the Mayan Ixil indigenous group. It marked the first time a former head of state had been convicted of genocide within his or her own country.

Addressing the packed courtroom, Judge Yasmin Barrios, who presided over the trial, said Rios Montt “had full knowledge of everything that was happening and did not stop it.”

However, 10 days later, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court threw out the conviction on a technicality. After much legal wrangling, a three-judge panel in 2015 ordered a retrial. By then, Gen. Rios Montt was reportedly suffering from dementia and, if convicted, was to forego sentencing because of his health.

Jose Efrain Rios Montt was born in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, on June 16, 1926. He joined the army at 17, won rapid promotions and, by 1970, had been named general and chief of staff of the army.

Survivors include his wife, the former Maria Sosa Avila; two children; and several grandchildren, according to the AP. Their daughter Zury Rios Montt, who also served in Guatemala’s Congress, is married to former U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Ill.

Rios Montt first ran for president in 1974. Although he is widely believed to have won, he was denied victory by the government’s electoral council. He accepted a post as Guatemala’s military attaché to Spain.

In 1978, Rios Montt joined the Church of the Word, whose missionaries had arrived two years earlier to help the survivors of a deadly earthquake that leveled parts of Guatemala City. His conversion was also interpreted as a rebuke to the Roman Catholic Church, which had ignored Rios Montt’s pleas to denounce the purported electoral fraud of 1974.

When he assumed power in the 1982 coup, Rios Montt announced that God had chosen him to save the country from communism. He delivered weekly morality sermons on television, even as his troops were rampaging through the countryside.

Three decades later, when the sweeping abuses of his dictatorship finally caught up with him in court, the defendant was defiant.

“I did not engage in genocide,” Rios Montt said during his 2013 trial. “I never authorized, never signed, never ordered an attack against a race, an ethnicity or a religion. I never did it!”</s>Former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who seized power in a 1982 coup, has died.

His lawyer, Jaime Hernandez, said the family told him the 91-year-old died of a heart attack.

Ríos Montt, who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of the country’s civil war as soldiers waged a scorched-earth campaign to root out Marxist guerrillas, was convicted in 2013 of genocide and crimes against humanity for the massacre of 1,771 indigenous Ixil Mayans by security forces under his command.

But the ruling was swiftly set aside and a new trial ordered, dismaying human rights activists and victims who long sought to see him punished for atrocities during his 17-month regime.

In October, his trial on genocide charges resumed behind closed doors after being suspended for more than a year while his lawyers argued that he was too senile to participate, with no memory and unable to make decisions.

He is survived by his wife, two children and several grandchildren.

An ex-general known for inspiring fear and giving speeches at a near-shout, Ríos Montt was later a longtime member of congress and one of the most influential figures in Guatemalan politics for more than three decades.

Born 16 June 1926, in the city of Huehuetenango, in western Guatemala’s highlands, Ríos Montt grew up in a conservative Roman Catholic family.

In March 1982, he seized power in a military coup and promptly suspended the constitution, disbanded congress and set in motion a ruthless counterinsurgency campaign that resulted in thousands of deaths. According to a UN truth commission, the worst atrocities of the 1960-1996 Guatemalan civil war took place during his rule.



Nonetheless he continued to receive the support of the United States, where Ronald Reagan called him “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.”

Ríos Montt’s government was known for faceless judges presiding over summary trials of suspected subversives, and for moralistic Sunday night TV messages.

In power, Ríos Montt alienated a broad spectrum of society, including the military, businesspeople and the Catholic church, leading to his ousting by another coup in August 1983 led by his own defence minister.

However he remained popular among many for his social welfare initiatives and for the relative peace his “iron fist” approach brought to some regions. In 1985, a clause was added to the constitution barring him and his progeny from seeking the presidency.

In 2003, Ríos Montt was finally able to make another run for president after the constitutional court allowed his candidacy. He came in a distant third — in part due to scandals under the government of Alfonso Portillo, who would later plead guilty in the US to laundering millions of ill-gotten dollars through American banks.

For years Ríos Montt enjoyed immunity from prosecution as an elected member of congress. That changed when he lost re-election in 2011 and was ordered into house arrest.

After more than 100 legal appeals were exhausted, his 2013 trial was seen as a historic opportunity to hold a Latin American dictator responsible for abuses committed on his watch.

Dozens of witnesses testified about rapes, massacres, forced displacement and other crimes by soldiers that, prosecutors argued, Ríos Montt either ordered or must have known about.

Ríos Montt was convicted and sentenced to 80 years. But practically before the ink on the ruling had time to dry, the ruling was tossed over trial irregularities and a new proceeding ordered.



At a hearing in January 2015, he was wheeled into court on a gurney ashen-faced, clad in pajamas, covered with a blanket and wearing dark sunglasses. It was a far cry from the man Guatemalans knew: diminutive of stature but with a booming voice, commanding presence and penetrating gaze.



A three-justice panel ruled that one of the judges had to recuse herself, delaying the retrial indefinitely.

According to the United Nations, some 245,000 people were killed or disappeared during Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war, with the vast majority of the killings attributed to the army or paramilitary groups.</s>FILE PHOTO: Former Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt smiles during his genocide trial, which is drawing to a conclusion, at Supreme Court of Justice in Guatemala City Thomson Reuters By Sofia Menchu

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Former Guatemalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt, hounded by charges of genocide for decades, died on Sunday aged 91, leaving bitter memories of his bloody stewardship of the Central American nation during its civil war.

Thousands of mostly rural Maya civilians were victims of massacre, rape and torture under a "scorched earth" policy implemented during his 17-month rule between 1982 and 1983 at the height of the Cold War-era conflict.

Rios Montt, diagnosed with senile dementia in 2015, faced a new genocide trial in 2017 overseen by a Supreme Court tribunal that was ongoing at the time of his death.

On Sunday, his lawyer Luis Rosales said the former dictator maintained his innocence up to his death.

In May 2013, a court found Rios Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, prompting Amnesty International to hail the proceedings as the trial of the decade.

But just 10 days afterwards, the country's top court quashed the conviction on a technicality after persistent efforts by his defense team to derail the trial with complex appeals.

Rios Montt took power in a bloodless coup in 1982 and founded the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front party.

An evangelical Protestant, Rios Montt was overthrown in August 1983, but served in Congress for nearly two decades until he stepped down in 2012. At a stroke, he lost the immunity granted by law to public officials and became open to prosecution for atrocities committed under his rule.

In January 2012, a Guatemalan court charged Rios Montt for conceiving a counterinsurgency plan that killed at least 1,771 members of the Ixil tribe and displaced thousands more. One year later, a judge ordered him to stand trial for the bloodshed.

The former dictator took the witness stand hours before his conviction, telling the court he had never committed genocide.

"My job as head of state was national policy. I was not commanding troops," said Rios Montt, then 86.

Human rights activists in Spain also sought to charge Rios Montt with war crimes in Spanish courts.

Critics likened Rios Montt to other Latin American presidents who ruled with an iron hand, like Chile's Augusto Pinochet and Peru's Alberto Fujimori.

But at the time his regime received open support from U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who believed Guatemala faced a serious challenge from leftist guerrillas suspected of being in alliance with Cold War communists.

An estimated 200,000, mostly Maya, civilians were killed during the 1960-1996 war and another 45,000 went missing.

A United Nations-backed truth commission report released after the 1996 peace accords found that the army and paramilitary groups were responsible for over 90 percent of more than 400 massacres during the war.

Born on June 16, 1926 in Guatemala's rural western highland department of Huehuetenango, Rios Montt was the third of 11 children and became fascinated with the army at an early age.

Joining the military academy in 1943, he participated in the 1954 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed military coup that ousted democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz who was seen by the United States as a communist sympathizer.

That coup eventually ignited the brutal civil war, pitting a string of right-wing governments against leftist guerillas.

Rios Montt rose to the rank of general in 1972 and sought the presidency in 1974, losing to rival Kjell Eugenio Laugerud, the handpicked successor of the incumbent.

He went into exile, serving in Spain as the Guatemalan military attaché, before returning home in 1977 where he was introduced to the evangelical Church of the Word, eventually becoming a lay minister.

On March 23, 1982, Rios Montt headed a junta which removed President Angel Guevara from power, denouncing the elections earlier in the month as fraudulent. Declaring his presidency to be the "will of God," Rios Montt annulled the constitution, dissolved Congress and suspended political parties.

He lost little time in reviewing the government's anti-insurgency measures, opting for a crackdown that led to tens of thousands of deaths, tortures and displacements of Guatemala's rural population suspected of aiding leftist rebels.

"If you are with us, we'll feed you, if not, we'll kill you," he famously told a crowd of indigenous Maya in July 1982.

Such pronouncements did not prevent Reagan from describing Rios Montt as "a man of great personal integrity" who was "totally committed to democracy."

In the 1990s Rios Montt tried twice to run for president but was blocked by a constitutional clause that prevented anyone who had taken part in a military coup from becoming head of state.

He settled for a seat in Congress instead, and went on to serve as president of the legislature.

Rios Montt tried again for the presidency in 2003 and when denied the chance, called on his supporters to take to the streets in protest. Two days of rioting now known as Black Thursday and Friday of Mourning erupted in the capital as protesters torched cars and buildings and shot out windows.

The courts eventually let the former general stand as a candidate, but he came a distant third in the race.
The trial of Guatemalan ex-ruler Efraín Ríos Montt, accused of genocide during the civil war in the 1980s, ends abruptly with the defendant's death.