PBI-Guatemala observes two-day court hearing that grants retired military officer alternative measures in the Emma & Antonio Molina Theissen case
On April 10, PBI-Guatemala posted:
“Today PBI observes a hearing in the Molina Theissen case in the First Room of the Court of Appeals. Tried the review of coercion measures requested by Hugo Ramiro Zaldaña Rojas, sentenced in this case for crimes of duties against humanity, forced disappearance of Marco Antonio and aggravated sexual violence against his sister Emma Molina Theissen.
The defense argues humanitarian rights, human rights and health care of the 83-year-old ex-serviceman according to his deficient rating. Zaldaña Rojas is facing substitute measures at the Military Hospital for the sentence issued in 2018 to 58 years in prison.
The MP [Public Ministry], the PGN [the Attorney General’s Office] and the adhesive plaintiffs argued against this request, for several reasons, among them, according to the due process code, the offences of which he is convicted for their severity do not allow a change of sentence; that a change of coercive measures would be against of a resolution of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in this same case; which follows the danger of obstruction of the truth by the fact that the convicted military never disclosed the whereabouts of Marco Antonio, missing from the family home when he was 14.
The First Room convened for tomorrow Friday at 10am to announce its resolution.”
Then on April 11, PBI-Guatemala posted:
“Today PBI observes the resolution hearing on review of coercion measures in Molina Theissen case
Hugo Ramiro Zaldaña, accused of crimes of duties against humanity, enforced disappearance and aggravated sexual violence, requested the modification of coercion measures imposed against him.
The magistrates have considered that the age of the accused, (82 years), his state of health and the absence of the risk of escape, justified the modification of restrictive liberty measures, allowing him telematical control and mobility to his home and health centers.”
Accompaniment
PBI-Guatemala has long followed this case. In April 2016, PBI-Guatemala noted: “This month we observed the Molina Thiessen family press conference.” And in October 2017, PBI-Guatemala further noted: “The Molina Thiessen trial will begin on March 1, 2018.”
Context
The Guardian has previously explained:
“[On September 27, 1981, 21-year-old social and political activist Emma Guadalupe Molina Theissen] was taken for interrogation to a military base in Quetzaltenango, western Guatemala, but refused to collaborate.
She was given electric shocks to the eyelids, was raped by her captors, and deprived of food and water to create sensory disorientation. Emma escaped by slipping through the cell railings because she had lost so much weight.
She fled to Mexico a few weeks later, unaware that her little brother [14-year-old Marco Antonio Molina Theissen] had been taken [on October 6, 1981], most likely in retaliation for her audacious escape.”
Photo: Emma Guadalupe Molina Theissen (left) and her mother Emma Theissen Álvarez de Molina hold a photo of Marco Antonio.
This past February, NISGUA noted: “On February 6, 2025, an appeal hearing of the 2018 sentence of the Molina Theissen case was held. This sentence sentenced Benedicto Lucas García, Manuel Callejas y Callejas, and Hugo Zaldaña Rojas to 58 years in prison for crimes against humanity, forced disappearance and aggravated sexual violence, as well as Francisco Luis Gordillo Martinez to 36 years in prison for the same crimes. The appeal filed by the defense of the former soldiers seeks to annul this sentence.”
Photo: Francisco Gordillo Martinez, Hugo Ramiro Zaldana, Manuel Antonio Callejas and Edilberto Letona Linares.
On April 11, Prensa Libre further reported:
“The alternate magistrates of the First Chamber of the Court of Appeals of the Criminal Branch of Higher Risk Processes revoked the preventive detention issued against retired military officer Hugo Ramiro Zaldaña Rojas, prosecuted in the Molina Theissen case, under the argument of his current state of health. For this reason, they will enjoy a substitute measure at home, under telematic control.
Although Zaldaña Rojas was convicted in 2018, along with other retired military officers, for the disappearance of Marco Antonio Molina Theissen and the rape of his sister, Emma Guadalupe, events that occurred in 1981, the sentence has not yet become final due to legal appeals filed.
Zaldaña Rojas was sentenced to 58 years in prison for the crimes of duties against humanity, forced disappearance and aggravated sexual violence.
For their part, the lawyers of the Molina Theissen family affirmed that the resolution of the magistrates is “plagued with illegalities,” at the end of the hearing to review coercive measures.”
We continue to follow this.
Excerpt from April 2016 PBI-Guatemala monthly information pack.
Further reading: Marco Antonio Molina Theissen: “Mom, what are they going to do to us?”: Despite the fact that more than 43 years have passed since that day, when two men invaded the residence of the Molina Theissen family, in the capital’s zone 19, his mother Emma remembers exactly the details of the last time she saw Marco Antonio, on October 6, 1981. (eP investiga, April 11, 2025)
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