Guatemala City – Former Guatemalan President Fernando Romeo Lucas, who was wanted in Spain on human rights charges, died in exile in Venezuela from Alzheimer’s disease, a source close to his family said Sunday. He was 81.
“Gen. Lucas Garcia died last night in Venezuela. His daughter, Ana Maria Lucas de Rivera, traveled early Sunday to be present at his funeral. I understand that he will be buried today at 4:00 p.m. (Venezuelan time) in that country,” Maria Elena Nana Winter, the former sister-in-law of Lucas, told Radio Sonora on Sunday.
Lucas, who governed Guatemala from 1978 to 1982, was wanted by the Spanish justice system on a number of charges, including murder, torture and kidnapping.
Spain’s National Court issued an international arrest warrant in February 2005 against Lucas in response to a suit filed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu.
The Venezuelan courts struck down the order, however, contending that Spain did not present the necessary documentation in time and that Lucas was suffering from serious health problems.
Lucas had lived for more than a decade in the coastal city of Puerto La Cruz in the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoategui, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Caracas, with his Venezuelan wife, Elsa Cirigliano.
He had suffered from diabetes for more than 25 years, chronic urinary tract infections and Alzheimer’s since 1991.
Menchu filed a criminal complaint in December 1999 with Spain’s National Court against Lucas, former Interior Minister Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz and other former high-ranking Guatemalan officials accused of attacking the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala in 1980, killing four Spanish priests and committing other human rights crimes between 1978 and 1986.
In the Jan. 31, 1980, attack on the embassy, a group of peasants from the Guatemalan province of Quiche, accompanied by students and workers, peacefully occupied the Spanish mission to call for an end to violence in the region.
In response, the security forces staged an attack on the embassy that left 38 people dead, many of them in the fire that ensued.
Menchu’s complaint alleging crimes against humanity in Guatemala named Alvarez Ruiz, as well as Lucas, and Gens. Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Mejia, who served as de-facto heads of the Guatemalan government in the 1980s. EFE
