Word: rother
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...Guatemalan President Fernando Romeo Lucas García, the arrests were timely and convenient. Father Rother's murder, widely believed to be the work of a pro-government rightist hit squad, had been a major embarrassment for Lucas Garcia's regime. The killing occurred just as the Reagan Administration was considering a resumption of the military aid that was cut off during the Carter years because of Guatemala's deplorable human rights record. The prompt arrests, however, seemed to vindicate the government's system of justice and disprove charges that its security forces may have been...
...largely by the testimony of one witness: Sister Ana Maria Gonzales Arias, a Mexican nun working as a missionary in Santiago Atitlán. Sister Gonzales was said to have told officials that she saw "various armed men" wearing hoods enter the church, where they were discovered by Father Rother apparently while they were "seeking to rob the church's money...
...reality, Sister Gonzales saw nothing. She was asleep in a nearby convent when the killing took place. There were only two eyewitnesses. One was Francisco Bocel Cumes, 18, a gardener, who was forced at gunpoint to lead the killers to Father Rother's sleeping quarters. The other was an American nurse named Bertha Sanchez, who was sleeping in a guest room in the rectory the night of the murder...
After the fatal shots were fired, Bocel Cumes ran to awaken Sister Gonzales and the other nuns. They all returned to Father Rother's sleeping quarters, where they found him lying in a pool of blood...
...mixed Indian and Spanish blood), considerably taller than the average full-blooded Indian, who spoke fluent Spanish. All of the arrested men are Indians who speak limited, heavily accented Spanish. Two of those arrested, Farmers Esteban Coche Leanda, 19, and Juna Quiju Caj, 25, actually were friends of Father Rother's. The third, Miguel Angel Mendoza Tecun, 32, is a well-known local merchant...