Rigoberto Danilo Morales will stay behind bars for a long time. A court in Guatemala’s capital on Monday sentenced this man accused of being a drug lord to 808 years in prison for the massacre of 15 Nicaraguans and a Dutchman in 2008, a judicial source said.
The court said he was sentenced to fifty years in prison for each murder and an additional eight years for criminal conspiracy. Guatemalan law, however, states that a prisoner cannot actually serve more than 50 years in prison.
Thirteen years on the run
Dabilo Morales, 37, was arrested in 2022 after 13 years on the run. His trial began in September. According to the prosecution, during the 2008 massacre, a bus entering Guatemala from Nicaragua and carrying the victims was intercepted by suspected drug traffickers.
They thought he was also carrying drugs, but when they realized that was not the case, they shot the travelers and burned the bodies at an estate owned by Marvin Montiel, another alleged leader of a drug trafficking network also sentenced in 2016 to a long prison sentence for this massacre.
On Monday, eight other people, including Marvin Montiel and his wife Sara Cruz, were convicted in the case and sentenced to prison terms of varying lengths.