BELIZE, Thurs. Sept. 16, 2021– A man believed to be a fugitive from Guatemala, who is suspected of having played a role in the brutal December 1982 massacre at Dos Erres, has been picked up by police and is awaiting expulsion back to his home country, where he will face questioning for war crimes.

Reports are that in August, Alfonso Bulux Vicente was detained by Dangriga police after Guatemalan law enforcement flagged him as being wanted for murder. This occurred after he attempted to apply for Belizean permanent residency. He is believed to have been hiding in Belize all this time.

During questioning by Belizean police, Vicente claimed that during the massacre he had been trying to help villagers flee, but reports confirmed that he was a trained Guatemalan Special Force solider, a Kaibile.

Between the 6th and the 7th of December 1982, what is believed to be the bloodiest episode in the Guatemalan genocide was played out at the hands of 58 Kaibile soldiers.

Following the robbery of an army convoy by Guatemalans which resulted in 21 soldiers being killed by guerrillas, a contingent from the elite special forces of commandos of the Guatemalan army was sent to the village to kill its inhabitants, believed to be guerrilla sympathizers.

What played out in the following two days was a bloodbath, as a series of shockingly brutal acts were carried out against the inhabitants of the village. Reports from judicial proceedings indicate that the inhabitants were forced out of their homes, and the men were corralled in the school building and the women in the two churches in the village.

After hours of searching for weapons to no avail, the soldiers proceeded to carry out their mission to eradicate the residents of the village.

According to judicial reports, the smallest children’s heads were bashed against walls or trees to kill them. They were separated from the adults and killed first. The women and girls were raped by the soldiers, while the older children received fatal hammer blows to the head.

The bodies were dumped in a well, and the soldiers turned on the adults, who were questioned and subsequently killed one by one. The men were shot and bashed in the head with hammers and the women were raped and then killed.

The bloodshed lasted until December 7. In the following days, as the soldiers were preparing to leave, 15 persons, including children, arrived in the small village. By that time, the well storing the dead bodies was full, so they took the newcomers a distance away and shot all but two of them.

These were two teenage girls whom they kept alive temporarily and continued raping in the following days before strangling both of them. Reports are that only one person, a small child, managed to escape the massacre.

More than 200 people were killed in the slaughter.

Santos Lopez, a Guatemalan soldier, was sentenced to more than 5,000 years in prison for his role in the massacre in 2018.