A Guatemalan court on Tuesday sentenced a man to 12 years in prison for complicity in the 2020 homicide of a French humanitarian, Benoît Maria, who worked for an NGO helping local populations, the court said. lawyer for the victim’s family.
The court in Quetzaltenango, the country’s second city, located 200 km west of the Guatemalan capital, sentenced the indigenous Diego Tay to “a sentence of 12 years in prison”, according to Edgar Pérez, lawyer from the Human law firm Rights Law Firm, which represents the victim’s family. “The court changed the qualification from assassination to homicide and considers that his participation is not as an author but an accomplice,” declared Me Pérez. Before the reclassification as homicide, the prosecution had requested a 50-year prison sentence against Diego Tay for murder.
Killed on a road while driving his pick-up
Director of the NGO Agronomists and Veterinarians Without Borders (AVSF) in Guatemala to support indigenous Mayan communities in agricultural development, Benoît Maria has worked for 20 years in the Central American country. He was killed on August 10, 2020, at the age of 52, at the wheel of his pick-up, on a road near the indigenous village of San Antonio Ilotenango (northwest), in the department of Quiché.
Diego Tay, a municipal councilor where the crime was committed, was also sentenced on the first day of his trial in December to three years and four months in prison for illegal possession of firearms, which is added to the new sentence . He faced up to 10 years in prison for this offense, but he pleaded guilty in order to reduce the sentence.
The motive of the crime still unknown
More than three years after the death of Benoît Maria, his family still does not know the motive for his homicide. Only Diego Tay took his place in the dock while another person, suspected of being involved in the facts, is still wanted and is the subject of “an international arrest warrant”, indicated the lawyer at the Paris bar, Clémence Witt, who is following the case from France. It would be Abraham Yay, Diego’s brother, said Mr. Pérez.
During the trial, the hypothesis of simple theft was excluded because the victim’s personal effects, including his phone, computer and cash, were found in Benoît Maria’s bullet-riddled vehicle.
During the arrest of Diego Tay in September 2021, the prosecutor’s office for its part mentioned extortion as a possible motive and hypothesized the refusal to pay a “right of passage”.
Emmanuel Macron praised his “humanist, fraternal and united commitment”
Local human rights organizations recalled that the crime occurred a week after the decision of the country’s highest court to order the state to return land to the Ixil indigenous people, supported by Benoît Maria, in the municipality from Nebaj (northwest).
The death of the French humanitarian had caused great emotion in France and in this Central American country. Benoît Maria was particularly known for having participated in the creation in 2011 of Ixil University, in the department of Quiché, dedicated to the ancestral knowledge of indigenous peoples, among other projects. Upon his death, French President Emmanuel Macron praised his “humanist, fraternal and united commitment”.