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The three judges made the request to Param Cumaraswamy, U.N. special reporter on the independence of judges and lawyers, when the U.N. envoy visited their courtroom on May 11.

Cumaraswamy was in Guatemala for three days to investigate death threats against judges and allegations of miscarriage of justice.

Three military officers and a priest are accused of killing Juan Gerardi, auxiliary bishop of Guatemala City, in 1998. The housekeeper of the parish where the bishop lived is charged with helping to cover up the crime.

Bishop Juan Gerardi was killed late on April 26, 1998, just two days after releasing a lengthy report blaming the country's military for most of the deaths and "disappearances"—abductions—during three decades of civil war.

The trial began in March. Shortly before it began, explosive devices were thrown at the house of Iris Barrios, one of the judges hearing the case. The judge was unharmed but angry. "It didn't make me afraid, it made me mad," she said.

Eduardo Cojulun, head of the three-judge panel, announced on April 27 that he had received two death threats.

Barrios, Cojulun and Amanda Guzman, the third judge, have all been given police bodyguards, and the Supreme Court auditorium where the case is being heard is heavily guarded. Visitors are thoroughly searched, and police with automatic weapons are stationed around the courtroom.

Chief prosecutor Leopoldo Zeissig and church attorney Mynor Melgar have also received repeated threats. Melgar represents the archdiocesan human rights office, which has been granted official standing in the trial.

According to a report from the Myrna Mack Foundation, a human rights organization here, in the first four months of this year 19 people called to testify in criminal trials received death threats. Ten of those cases were related to the Gerardi trial. Several witnesses at the trial have appeared in court wearing bulletproof vests.

At least eight people linked to the case—including judges, prosecutors and witnesses—have been forced to flee the country after being attacked or threatened.

Before he left the country on May 12, Cumaraswamy said President Alfonso Portillo's government "simply does not have the will to get to the bottom of the problem of impunity."

Cumaraswamy made no statement about how he would respond to the judges' request.

Seven weeks of testimony have now been completed in the trial, and prosecutors have said they are confident that they have proved their case against the accused.

Although no trial witness has claimed to have seen the bishop's murder, prosecutors have presented testimony that they say places the accused at the scene of the crime and establishes that they possessed a motive to kill the prelate.

Key testimony came on April 30 from Ruben Chanax, who was brought back from hiding abroad in order to testify. At the time of the murder, Chanax was homeless and often lived in a park near the bishop's house.

Although prosecutors had presented a written deposition from him at the beginning of the trial, defense attorneys had insisted on their right to cross-examine him.

In his testimony, Chanax claimed that one of the defendants, retired Colonel Disrael Lima Estrada, had employed him for two years to spy on Bishop Gerardi. Chanax filed his reports every Saturday at the headquarters of the Presidential Guard, for which he was paid $40 a week, he said. To watch the bishop, Chanax stayed in the park in front of Bishop Gerardi's residence, washing cars in the daytime and sleeping on benches at night.

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May (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45