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GUATEMALA''S FEARED E.M.P. IS GONE, BUT THE THREAT REMAINS.

Article Excerpt
The Estado Mayor Presidencial (EMP) has ceased to exist in Guatemala. The official end to the organization came on Oct. 28, when the official organ of the government published the law creating the Secretaria de Asuntos Administrativos y de Seguridad (SAAS), replacing the EMP. The stated function of the EMP was to provide security to the president, the vice president, and their families.

The EMP has long been associated with some of the most grievous, as well as the most high-profile, crimes in the modern history of the country. The convicted murderer of Myrna Mack, Noel de Jesus Beteta, was an army sergeant in the EMP (see NotiCen, 2003-05-08). The accused intellectual authors of the crime were the organization's commanders. EMP complicity in the nation's most heinous human rights crimes even outlived the 36-year civil war, which ended officially with the signing of the Peace Accords of Dec. 29, 1996.

Created in the early 1980s as the Archivos Generales y Servicios de Apoyo a la Presidencia de la Republica del Estado Mayor Presidencial (AGSAEMP), the EMP had authority to arrest and interrogate at its discretion, and it was linked to death squads operating at the time.

In 1986, with the installation of the government of President Venicio Cerezo (1986-1990), the first civilian government since the...

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