Slain lawyer accuses Guatemala's president in tape
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
Associated Press Writer
GUATEMALA CITY -- A lawyer slain by gunmen over the weekend appears in a video tape that emerged Monday alleging that if anything happened to him it would be at the behest of Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom.
Colom's spokesman, Fernando Barrillas, issued a statement saying the government "categorically rejects any accusations made in tapes and statements being distributed to some news media."
"This reveals the intention of creating a political crisis around a case that should be investigated and processed by the courts," the statement posted on the government's Web site said.
Lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg was shot to death by unidentified assailants while riding his bicycle Sunday, the newspaper El Periodico de Guatemala said.
In the video distributed to local media, Rosenberg says: "If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Alvaro Colom with help from Gustavo Alejos," the president's private secretary.
Former interior minister Adela de Torrebiarte, who knew Rosenberg, said he was the man on the video.
The director of El Periodico, Juan Luis Font, said the accusation was distributed to media in audio format at Rosenberg's funeral and later in the video.
Rosenberg says on the tape that officials might want to kill him because he represented businessman Khalil Musa, who was killed along with his daughter Marjorie in March. Rosenberg alleged those killings were in retaliation for Musa's refusal to engage in acts of corruption that Colom purportedly invited him to participate in.
English translation of the document left by Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano - according to what was published in Spanish on May 11, 2009 in Guatemalan newspapers El Periodico, Prensa Libre -
“If you are reading this message it is because I Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano have been murdered by Gustavo Alejos, the President´s Private Secretariat and his partner Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Alvaro Colom (The President) and Sandra de Colom (The First Lady).
The reason why Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez have ordered my death and the President of the Republic, Alvaro Colom approved it, is because until the day they killed me, I was the lawyer of two incredible Guatemalans, Mr. Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa, and I knew exactly how Alvaro Colom, Sandra de Colom, Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez were responsible for that cowardly murder, and I told them so and told those who wanted and could hear.
I was a 47 year old Guatemalan, with 4 divine children, with the best brother one could ask life for, with incredible friends, who wanted very much to live in my country, but I could not have lived with myself without rebelling, being brave and denouncing to all Guatemalans that have principles and values about the real reasons for the death of Mr. Kahlil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa, with no regards to the consequences and in the understanding that my life was in danger I wanted to leave this testament in case something happened to me and it unfortunately did.
Alvaro Colom, by means of Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez asked Mr. Khalil Musa for his collaboration so he would form a part of the board of directors of Banrural in an ad honorem fashion, Mr. Khalil Musa did not suspect of the millionaire illegal businesses that are done every day in Banrural, those businesses go from money laundering to deviating public funds to inexistent programs of the first lady Sandra de Colom, as well as financing to shell companies used by drugtraffickers.
It is Alvaro Colom in agreement with Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez that retain the already signed appointment of Mr. Khalil Musa, without him knowing about it, for more than 3 months, because they did not have any intention of having him assume as Director, they only used his good name with the argument that if new power cuotas were not distributed Mr. Khalil would denounce, when he discovered, the corruption with which the general manager of Banrural, Mr. Fernando Peña, manages the bank at his own pleasure to the service of Mrs. Sandra de Colom and as a partner and financier with the bank´s funds of the businesses of Gregorio Valdez and Gustavo Alejos, without the President of the Bank, Mr. Jose Angel Lopez doing anything to prevent that Fernando Peña converts Banrural into the cave of robbers, drug traffickers and murderers it is today.
With the impunity that we Guatemalans have granted in the past years to the robbers and murderers in this country, Jose Angel Lopez, Fernando Peña and the coward Gerardo de Leon, in a direct fashion threaten and intimidate Mr. Khalil Musa, a few weeks before his and his daughter´s murder, so that he resigns his appointment and Mr. Khalil Musa tells them, as the gentleman he always was, that he had no problem if the appointment was cancelled, since whom asked him to accept the appointment was Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez in agreement with our splendid president Alvaro Colom and his permanent shadow Sandra de Colom.
Mr. Khalil Musa informs Gustavo Alejos and Alvaro Colom of his decision not to participate in the board of Banrural in order to avoid problems, but they told him to please give them time, since everything was resolved without having an idea that once the robbers and the murderers agreed he would be murdered along with his daughter Marjorie Musa (who´s only sin was to be an exemplary daughter that always accompanied her father) because he had already fulfilled his purpose, without caring about anything and with the complete tranquility of knowing that good Guatemalans, once again would do absolutely nothing, justifying their inaction in the impotence that hounds us or simply saying “they were surely involved in something”.
Without any principle or moral value and without the most minimum sense of shame, Gustavo Alejos personally, after trying to make up other hypothesis that nobody accepted because of the moral quality of those murdered, tells the family of Mr. Khalil Musa and of his daughter Marjorie Musa, that unfortunately they had been murdered because of the horrible problems that exist in Banrural, going so much so that the President Alvaro Colom himself invites a political relative of Mr. Khalil Musa to his office to confirm what had been said by his Private Secretary.
Now you can understand why neither Alvaro Colom nor Gustavo Alejos were not careful not to publically declare what they told the family of Mr. Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa and gave the order to the incompetent and corrupt Ministry of the Interior and the inexistent Prosecutor General to leave, once again, this cowardly murder unsolved, as happens with all murders, robberies and violations that have our country plunged into its worst period.
Day by day this story is repeated and fills with pain one more family in our Guatemala, while good Guatemalans decide to look the other way and pray that nothing happens to us.
That´s enough, lets rescue our country from the robbers, the assassins, the drugtrafickers and let´s all together recover our Guatemala, our values and our faith in justice and kick out the current puppet we have for a president and put into jail the robbers and assassins, starting with Gustavo Alejos, Gregorio Valdez, Fernando Peña and Gerardo de León, among others, and once and for all demand the resignation of all current members of our congress, that with a very few and honorable exceptions are robbers and let’s start again for the love of God and our country.
Surely the cowards will defend themselves by trying to stain the memory of Mr. Khalil Musa or his daughter Marjorie Musa and will try to convince Guatemalans that all of this is a new plot, but in the end, the only truth that matters is that if you read this message it´s because I Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano was murdered by Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez with the approval of Mr. Alvaro Colom and Sandra Colom for refusing to allow the most cowardly and vile murder of two incredible people as were Mr. Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa it to become one more statistic, and continue to deliver my country to the cowardly assassins, robbers and drug traffickers that actually govern it.
P.S.//To the Vice President of the Republic Dr. Rafael Espada I remind you that those who are silent consent and that you are not robber or assassin, you must be the first one to lead a movement to recover our Guatemala and have the law fulfilled with the help of all the good Guatemalans that support you without reservations.”
Magnetonium
Why am I not surprised? Corruption, crime and murder in that region is still an ongoing issue.
Contra really messed up Nicaragua, didn't it?
woscar
Like you wouldn't believe. This case has the potential to start a revolution here in Guatemala though, unless indifference wins. Again.
As of now, pacific manifestations have been organized until the President resigns from his post but things could get ugly pretty quick since it has been reported that the office party has brought people from the most marginal parts of the country to support him. He really has a lot of people convinced that he is the next coming of Jesus since he has them bought with food and shoes.
DJ Damerchi
If they hadn't killed this guy, he would have been labelled a paranoid conspiracy theorist. He was either going to die, or be labelled a quack. I see his actions as brave, and I hope he doesn't die in vain.
I see there aren't any Amnesty International offices open in Guatemala, that would have been a great avenue for sanctuary. I am family friends with quite a few dissenters in Saddam's era, and were greatly aided by this NGO when they escaped. Did he try to flee the country at all?
tathi
people like Rodrigo Rosenberg and the Mexican journalist Carlos Ortega Samper (who was murdered on World Press Freedom Day after threats from local government officials for an article he wrote) are heroes and have only my complete admiration and respect.
i hope this courageous act has spun the seeds of revolution if the status quo is as Rodrigo claims
thanks for bringing it to my attention woscar (time to twitter it!)
woscar
quote:
Originally posted by DJ Damerchi
If they hadn't killed this guy, he would have been labelled a paranoid conspiracy theorist. He was either going to die, or be labelled a quack. I see his actions as brave, and I hope he doesn't die in vain.
I think that somewhere down the line, he realized this and that's what makes his actions even more brave and heroic. The tone of his voice in the video is that of a man that is not afraid in the least bit. He was murdered just 2 blocks away from his home while riding his bike. The same thing he did every Sunday morning.
quote:
Originally posted by DJ Damerchi
I see there aren't any Amnesty International offices open in Guatemala, that would have been a great avenue for sanctuary. I am family friends with quite a few dissenters in Saddam's era, and were greatly aided by this NGO when they escaped. Did he try to flee the country at all?
As a matter of fact he never tried to run or hide. It has now been revealed that he was scheduled to appear as a guest on a serious radio show on Monday, where he would present his case, along with the evidence he claimed to have. He had also planned to fly to Washington to present his case to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and make a formal accusation against the people involved. Sadly, he was murdered before he could do that.
woscar
Added the first part of the video with English subs for all the non-Spanish speakers ;)
Magnetonium
Holly crap! This is ridiculous!
From tweeter to possible jailbird
Guatemalan man fears arrest over anti-government message
quote:
June 26, 2009
Juan Carlos Llorca
The Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY — Jean Anleu was so fed up with corruption in his country that he decided to vent on the Internet, sending a 96-character message on the social-networking site Twitter.
That message has now earned him a potential five-year prison sentence and the unfortunate distinction of becoming one of the first people in the world to be arrested for a tweet.
Writing under his Internet alias “jeanfer,” Anleu urged depositors to pull their money from Guatemala’s rural development bank, whose management has been challenged in a political scandal: “First concrete action should be take cash out of Banrural and bankrupt the bank of the corrupt.”
These words illegally undermined public trust in Guatemala’s banking system, according to prosecutor Genaro Pacheco. Authorities proved Anleu sent the message by searching his Guatemala City home, and then put him in prison with kidnappers, extortionists and other dangerous criminals for a day and a half before letting him out on bail.
Anleu’s lawyer, Jose Toledo, believes the government wants to make an example of him.
“Clearly, the message was: Watch out, any of you guys that want to post messages, this can happen to you. ... It was a dissuasive measure,” Toledo said.
Guatemala, whose democracy is still emerging from a genocidal civil war, isn’t the only government concerned about the potential of lightning-fast tweets to spread stinging words.
More recently, Iran has shown its determination to clamp down on huge protests over its disputed presidential election, banning firsthand reporting by international journalists and blocking access inside the country to websites such as Twitter and Facebook as well as many sites linked to the political opposition. Text messaging has been blacked out and cellphone service in Tehran is frequently down.
More than 2,000 people have been arrested in Iran, many of them for Internet activity, estimates Hadi Ghaemi, director of the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
“I can’t say I know of a specific case of tweeting,” said Ghaemi, noting that Iran’s government has not yet filed charges. “Evidence may be a tweet or something but we’re just not going to know until these trials are under way.”
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone declined to comment on the Anleu case or say whether he knows of other arrests involving tweeting.
China and Vietnam are two other countries that already “worry a lot about text messaging and its potential to spread rumors and gather crowds. Now they have another venue to watch — another place where people can communicate quickly, in ways that a government might fear,” said Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
For Anleu — a geeky computer enthusiast whose passions include playing chess and reading Czech author Franz Kafka — life has taken on some disturbing parallels to Kafka’s “The Trial,” whose protagonist struggles to defend himself against the power of the state.
“I fear I’m being watched and scrutinized in everything I say and do,” said Anleu, who walks around with an iPhone to constantly tweet and a BlackBerry loaded with e-books. “The fear makes me want to avoid saying what I think, even about the most mundane topics, and saying where I am, where I’m going — like you would normally do on Twitter.”
Pacheco said prosecutors plan to charge Anleu in July under a 2008 law that provides for five years in prison and a $6,200 fine for spreading false information that undermines the public’s trust in a financial institution.
But if the government hoped to silence criticism, it appears to have had the opposite effect. As news of Anleu’s arrest spread through the Twitter community, thousands of others started “re-tweeting” his message, bringing Guatemala’s government still more unwanted publicity.
About half of his $6,200 bail was donated by Twitterers, who sent money via PayPal from 19 countries. The other 50 per cent was lent to him by one of the companies he works for as a business technology consultant.
And Anleu’s social network has grown to more than 1,600 followers, up from about 175 who before his arrest mostly shared tweets about “computers and other geeky stuff,” he says.
Some call this phenomenon the “Streisand effect,” a term coined by Techdirt Inc. chief executive Mike Masnick on his popular technology blog after the actress Barbra Streisand sued in 2003 to remove satellite photos of her estate in Malibu, Calif. The case just drove more attention to the photos and made them more widely accessible.
The Internet has become a potent organizing tool for opponents of Guatemala’s president, Alvaro Colom. In a videotaped message from a lawyer, Colom was accused of helping drug cartels launder money through Banrural. The lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg, said in the message that if he was killed, it would be because Colom ordered it. Rosenberg was shot dead by unknown assailants days after making the video.
DVDs of the tape were distributed at his funeral, and Colom opponents quickly put the video up on YouTube. Many Guatemalans — including Anleu — responded with outrage on social networks, encouraging huge protest marches.
Colom, the first leftist president since a CIA-orchestrated coup overthrew Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, said the accusations are part of an elaborate plot to destabilize the country. His foreign minister suggested the entire scandal might be staged by organized crime groups who might have forced Rosenberg to tape the message under threats.
The upheaval since then is arguably the first truly online phenomenon in this country where Internet is still far beyond the reach of the majority of the population.
And because most poorer Guatemalans who support Colom have little chance of logging on, Colom’s supporters are vastly outnumbered. The Facebook group “Guatemalans united ask for the resignation of Alvaro Colom” has 41,000 members, about a third of Facebook’s reported Guatemalan population, while “Solidarity with Alvaro Colom” has fewer than 150 this week.
Anleu, however, is trying to keep his tweets more restrained and less political.
His lawyer hopes this will all blow over and the trial, set for November, will never happen.
“The prosecutors will eventually see their mistake, that they got the wrong person, someone innocent,” Toledo said.
Even so, Anleu’s legal bills will run close to $10,000 US by year’s end — a tough blow for a man who volunteers in his spare time to bring open-source software and training to schools in poor neighbourhoods.
“When this is over, I want to travel, I want to see the world ... sit in a cafe in Budapest or Prague,” that Kafka might have frequented a century ago, Anleu said. First, he said, “comes paying all these bills.”
