36 the attorney, and no one would take the case due to the obvious risks involved and that taking a case for someone who had been murdered would somehow link them to subversion. For this reason, she had to study the law and begin various steps on her own. At the start, the police investigation of her sister’s murder was entrusted to a first team constituted by policemen José Mérida Escobar and Julio Pérez Ixcajop, who prepared a police report dated September 29, 1990, in which they identified Noel de Jesús Beteta Álvarez, a former sergeant major who was a member of the so-called “Archivo” of the Presidential General Staff, as the main suspect of the murder. In said report, they reached the conclusion that the crime was politically motivated. However, this report was not submitted to the courts in Guatemala. Instead, a mutilated report dated November 4, 1990, was submitted to the courts, stating that the motivation of the crime was robbery and that at the time there were no suspects. The “Archivo” was a military unit mostly composed of the well-known death squads. It originated in the international treaties signed by Guatemala with the United States to apply the national security doctrine, and initially it was known as the “Regional.” When the first civilian government was elected, they only changed its name to “Presidential Security Department,” part of the “Estado Mayor Presidencial” or Presidential General Staff, but its activities linked to grave human rights violations, disappearances, extra-legal executions and tortures continued. Mérida Escobar rendered testimony before a court on all that he had investigated and on the conclusions of his September 29, 1990 report, and he recognized his signature on said report and on the daily reports he had prepared. When he completed his statement, the representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office approached him and told him that he had just signed his death sentence. In point of fact, detective Mérida Escobar began his statement saying that he feared for his life. He was murdered on August 5, 1991, on his way to the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman. Both Rember Larios Tobar, the former supervisor of José Mérida Escobar, and his auxiliary colleague in the investigation, Julio Pérez Ixcajop, had to seek exile in Canada. All the witnesses, one journalist and one legal assistant also had to go into exile. In view of this situation, she requested rogatory letters, in the ongoing proceedings, for the witnesses who were in exile to render testimony before the respective national courts. Nevertheless, the authorities in charge took about a year to process the requests, and did so in such a poor manner and they were so defective that when they reached Canada they were rejected because they did not comply with all the requirements, for which reason they had to request them again. The procedural terms expired and it was not possible to execute these rogatory letters, which forced them to seek out the witnesses in Canada and try to obtain all the security measures required for them to render their testimony in Guatemala. Beteta Alvarez was finally sentenced to 30 years in prison as the direct perpetrator of her sister’s murder. However, during the first and second instance judgments they were barred from accusing all those who were responsible, both direct perpetrators and accessories, for which reason they had to resort to an appeal to reverse those decisions and to be able to proceed with the efforts to prosecute the accessories. In 1994, a second proceeding began against the accessories of Myrna Mack Chang’s murder: general Edgar Augusto Godoy Gaitán, head of the Presidential General Staff, Juan Valencia Osorio, director of the Presidential Security Department, Juan