Student Édgar Sáenz Calito was disappeared in June 1981.  Photo: http://www.hijosguate.blogspot.com/

Pedro García Arredondo, former chief of the now defunct National Police’s infamous Comando Seis was convicted for the forced disappearance of student Édgar Sáenz Calito in June 1981.  He was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

Investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s office found that Sáenz Calito was kidnapped, interrogated, submitted to torture and ultimately disappeared between March and June 1981.  Arredondo was found guilty for his role in planning and coordinating the operation, committed by Comando Seis.

Arredondo is also named in the legal case Rigoberta Menchú Tum filed before the Spanish courts for the burning of the Spanish embassy on January 30, 1980.  Over 30 campesinos and Spanish citizens, including Menchú Tum’s father, were killed in the massacre.  Extradition warrants were generated for the capture of Arredondo in 2006, as well as Efraín Ríos Montt, retired generals Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores and Romeo Lucas García, and two former ministers, Donaldo Álvarez Ruíz and General Ángel Anibal Guevara.  The extraditions were never carried out.

Comando Seis has also been implicated as responsible for other atrocities of the internal armed conflict, including the murder of 27 union workers of the CNT (National Confederation of Workers) and the disappearance of student leader Oliverio Castañeda León.