PBI-Guatemala accompanied Military Diary court hearings in 2025; joint communiqué calls for an end to impunity

On May 28, 2026, numerous groups, including the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala (FAMDEGUA) and the Canada Platform for State Terrorism, released a joint communiqué that states: “27 years have passed since the appearance of the so-called Military Diary or Dossier of Death.”

The “Military Diary” is a 54-page document made public on May 20, 1999, that documents the murder and forced disappearance of 183 people between 1983 and 1985. Operations against the “internal enemy”, including labour organizers, were carried out by a clandestine intelligence unit linked to the National Police.

Those listed in the “Military Diary” who were killed include Amancio Samuel Villatoro, general secretary of the Adams factory union.

Trade unionist Rubén Amílcar Farfán was also killed.

And among those forcibly disappeared was Álvaro René Sosa Ramos, the Secretary of Organization of the Diana company union.

Reflecting on this time, Miguel Angel Albizures, a trade unionist in the 1980s, tells Agencia Ocote: “The workers’ movement, the trade union movement, was seriously affected with the kidnapping and disappearance of many leaders.”

The joint communiqué further states that 27 years after the leak of the Military Diary: “We strongly condemn the constant judicial delays, the actions in favor of impunity generated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office under the administration of former Attorney General Consuelo Porras, the delaying actions and the malicious litigation promoted by the defendants’ defenses, strategies that have unnecessarily prolonged the process and have turned access to justice into a race against time. While those responsible resort to the legal maneuvers of malicious litigation to evade their responsibility, the victims continue to wait for truth and justice.”

PBI-Guatemala has been accompanying the #CasoDiarioMilitar (Military Diary Case) court hearing process that began in May 2021.

Over the past year, PBI-Guatemala has accompanied court hearings and posted about them on social media on December 23, 2025; December 18, 2025; October 21, 2025; August 28, 2025; August 20, 2025; and July 22, 2025.

We continue to follow this.

Additional reading: PBI-Guatemala accompanies court hearings on Military Diary case; trade unionists among those forcibly disappeared by army and police (PBI-Canada, October 14, 2025).