ABSTRACT
The Genocide Convention, to which Guatemala has long been a party, requires that states criminalize and prosecute allegations of genocide committed in their territory. This chapter summarizes the development of the Spanish and domestic cases and the prospects for holding criminally responsible those who committed the acts. On December 12, 2007, the Guatemala's Constitutional Court (GCC) ruled that the Spanish arrest warrants were invalid and that defendants could not be extradited. The defendants, throughout the process, filed challenge after challenge, some of them almost exact repetitions of earlier ones. The defendants' repeated challenges suspended the proceedings over and over again, to the immense frustration of the complainants. The GCC's decision is clearly a setback for the complainants and for international law. Most spectacularly, Spanish Judge Pedraz also responded to the GCC decision. Nonetheless, the judge wrote, the GCC decision showed the continued need for Spanish judicial authorities to investigate the alleged crimes.
