Pedro Pimentel Rios, 54, an erstwhile maintenance worker from Santa Ana, has been deported to Guatemala to stand trial for his involvement in the most notorious massacre of that country's civil war. Along with several other suspects who have been rounded up in the US, Canada and Guatemala in recent years, Rios was a member of the elite Kaibiles, a special forces squad that committed some of the worst human rights violations of the war, and which in 1982 wiped out the entire village of Dos Erres in spectacularly brutal fashion.
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The news that Rios lost his bid to avoid deportation came in the form of
an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) press release issued
yesterday, which stated that Rios was flown to Guatemala yesterday and
immediately placed in custody by police there. For a more detailed account of the massacre Rios is alleged to have helped carry out, you can read ICE's press release or check out our original blog post on Rios.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).