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	Franco"s Courts to be declared illegitimate by The Guardian Spain   21/4/2007   Spain"s governing Socialist Party is to pass a law declaring the political courts that operated under dictator General Francisco Franco to be illegitimate, thus opening the way for thousands of sentences to be declared null, according to Spanish politicians.   Prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero"s government has cleared the way for death sentences and other decisions of military tribunals and special courts to be challenged, Spain"s United Left coalition group announced.   A new law will declare Franco"s court martials, public order tribunals and courts set up specifically to pursue communists and freemasons as "contrary to the law" and "illegitimate", said the United Left leader, Gaspar Llamazares.   That would allow families of victims to ask the supreme court to declare their sentences null and, in turn, seek compensation, said Mr Llamazares. "This is a qualitative leap from impunity towards justice," he said. Campaigners welcomed the agreement between the Socialists and United Left, who jointly see themselves as representing the republicans who lost the civil war against Franco"s rightwing rebels. Campaigners said the new deal improved on an earlier Socialist proposal which shied away from annulling sentences and prevented the naming of those who administered Franco"s political courts until his death in 1975.   The law would concentrate on the victims of Franco"s nationalist during the civil war rather than on the victims of the republic"s mainly leftwing defenders, according to Mr Llamazares.   Those killed in republican areas included more than 6,000 priests, monks and nuns.   The Prime Minister"s grandfather was shot by Franco"s firing squads. Mr Llamazares said the draft was not finalised, but that the United Left and the Socialists agreed on the fundamentals.
	Organised crime wave grips Guatemala by Adam Thomson The Financial Times Guatemala   Guatemala City. April 18, 2007   It is barely lunchtime on a Tuesday but the bodies are already starting to pile up at the Guatemala City morgue. Three of them, men aged between 21 and 32, are the victims of gunshot wounds. Two more probably are, too, though the doctors have yet to confirm it – the corpses have arrived in a state of severe decomposition.   Mario Guerra, the morgue’s director, says the murder rate has risen so quickly over the last few years that he and his staff are overwhelmed. “I have 10 doctors to deal with all of this,” he says, in front of a shrine with a statue of the Virgin Mary clasping her hands together. “But if we are to cope we need between five and 10 more.”   In 1996, when Guatemala emerged from a bloody civil war lasting more than 30 years, people thought that the peace accords between government and leftwing rebels would bring an end to the violence.   A little more than a decade later, spiralling drugs related crime has proved them wrong. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 6,033 people were murdered last year – 13 per cent more than in 2005 and higher even than during the conflict.   Frank La Rue, director of the presidential human rights commission, admits the situation is acute. “Organised crime is taking over the country,” he says.   The security issue is already starting to dominate campaigns for September’s presidential elections, while neighbouring governments, such as that of Mexico to the north, have expressed escalating concern that things could get out of control.   The most visible source of the killings is the rival youth gangs, known as maras, which also operate in Honduras, El Salvador and some parts of Mexico. Estimates of their number vary wildly but some claim that there are 200,000 gang members in Guatemala. Even the more conservative government figures of between 20,000 and 50,000 suggest that there are significantly more maras than policemen.   Iván Estuardo García, a consultant with the UNDP in Guatemala City, says the lack of employment opportunities, educational facilities and recreational spaces is putting 2m more youths at risk of joining the gangs. “They are sitting at home without anything to do,” he says. “But they’re kids and they are getting bored and frustrated.”   In El Limón, an impoverished neighbourhood on the outskirts of Guatemala City, it is all too easy to see the problem. Ramshackle dwellings, often of just one room, are piled tightly and precariously on the hillside. There are only two schools, with a capacity of less than 2,000 for a population of about 35,000, about 70 per cent of whom are of school age.   For several years, Celeste, 18, has been studying at Ceiba, a non-governmental organisation that does its best to make up for the educational shortfall in El Limón.   Every day she takes the half-hour bus ride to Ceiba’s headquarters – it is a 15-minute walk from her house but she says it is too dangerous to go by foot – to study web-page design. And when she graduates she intends to do it professionally. But she knows that she is one of the lucky few. “Many of my friends joined the maras. Two of them are already dead,” she says.   Experts say the gangs are merely the footsoldiers of organised crime, which has grown rich on the illegal drugs trade and infiltrated some state institutions, including the police. The issue has taken on greater urgency since the apparent discovery of death squads operating within the force, after four officers were accused in February of gunning down three congressmen from El Salvador along with their driver. Many political analysts and government officials insist the officers, who were later assassinated while in custody, were on the payroll of the drug-smuggling cartels.   Eduardo Stein, the vice-president, admits the incident was a blow. “We felt we were making progress on gradually cleaning up the police force,” he told the Financial Times. “This was a terrible setback.”   As the country’s electoral race gradually takes shape – official campaigning begins in May – the leading candidates have made security a priority. But while they are busy thinking up proposals most experts agree that there is no quick fix.   Improving opportunities and education for the poor, rooting out corruption within the police and other institutions and making the country’s justice system work – it currently resolves less than 1 per cent of cases – requires money, they say.   Yet the Guatemalan government collects taxes equivalent to only about 10 per cent of gross domestic product, one of the lowest in Latin America, and while collection is improving, passing a far-reaching fiscal reform has so far proved impossible.   Mr La Rue is under no illusions as to the result. “The government has achieved a lot on human rights but it has not done much to strengthen security . . . the bottom line is that the state is very weak.”
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