Judge revokes citizenship of Guatemalan who helped lead massacre of 200-person village

OTTAWA — A federal judge took the exceptional step of revoking a Canadian man’s citizenship after it was discovered that he helped lead a Guatemalan military unit that committed unspeakable monstrosities and massacred a village of 200 in Guatemala over 40 years ago.

In a decision published Thursday, Federal Court Justice Roger Lafrenière put an end to a nearly nine year legal saga by revoking the 34-year-old citizenship of Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes and declaring him inadmissible to the country.

As fourth in command of a Guatemalan special forces unit at the time, Sosa both murdered and ordered the killing of civilians during the 1982 Las Dos Erres massacre that effectively wiped the village off the face of the Earth, Lafrenière wrote.

Furthermore, Sosa lied about both his implication in the Guatemalan military and his role in the massacre when he applied for refugee status and then Canadian citizenship, which he obtained via “subterfuge” in 1992, the decision notes.

Lafrenière also ordered Sosa pay nearly a quarter million dollars to cover the federal government’s costs for the trial, which included arranging the testimony of one of two massacre survivors, two of Sosa’s former military colleagues who were present during the bloodbath and eight expert witnesses or Canadian immigration officials.

It is rare for a judge to approve the revocation of a Canadian’s citizenship, showing how grave Sosa’s actions were over four decades ago.

Lafrenière’s 136-page ruling reads like a horror story.

It recounts testimony from one of Sosa’s former military colleagues about how Sosa taught his unit torture methods on live victims at a practice zone called the “zombie area.”

It describes the hours-long massacre in the thick of a decades-long Guatemalan civil war of the 200-resident Guatemalan village Las Dos Erres in 1982 by an elite government military force called the Kaibiles.

It recounts harrowing testimony of “extreme cruelty” from unit commanders such as Sosa, who ordered the slaughter of the entire village after they failed to find 21 weapons allegedly stolen by guerrilla forces from the military and purportedly hidden at Las Dos Erres.

Children were smashed against trees. A two-month old was flung into a well to drown, his body soon covered by countless others — some still alive — who had either been shot or had their skull crushed by the swing of a soldier’s sledgehammer.

Many soldiers raped and murdered women, often in front of their children.

“All of the villagers in the well were ultimately killed… I find those killings were done under the watch and orders of Mr. Sosa,” the judge wrote.

Sosa himself, Lafrenière wrote, shot a man and threw a grenade into the well to quiet the cries of civilians left there to die.

One decade later, investigators would exhume the remains of “a minimum” of 162 people in that well, with the first victims at the bottom being children under the age of 12 and women.

“When the well was being covered up, screams and cries of victims could still be heard. They were left to die a horrible death,” the judge wrote.

“Members of the patrol unit laughed as if nothing had happened. That night, they celebrated having killed everyone.”

The unit moved out the following day, murdering dozens more people who came to visit the village or that the patrol encountered on the route.

In 1985, Sosa moved to the U.S. and applied for asylum, which was denied likely on the basis that he admitted being in the military during the bloody Guatemalan civil war, Lafrenière wrote.

Sosa revised his tactics and turned to Canada. In 1987, he applied for asylum at the Canadian consulate in San Francisco but never told immigration officials that he had served in the Guatemalan military, the decision notes.

Lafrenière wrote that he was granted refugee status a few later and then Canadian citizenship in 1992. During this time, Sosa’s role with the Kaibiles was unknown to the Canadian government as he repeatedly lied during his application and immigration interviews, Lafrenière concluded.

Had Sosa declared his military service, he never would have been granted asylum to Canada, testified the immigration official who approved Sosa’s application in 1987.

“There is credible and reliable evidence that in his application form, Mr Sosa fabricated his education and work history, concealed his military past and manufactured an asylum claim out of whole cloth,” the judge wrote, saying Sosa’s citizenship was granted based on “subterfuge.”

After finally investigating alleged crimes against humanity committed during the civil war, Guatemalan authorities issued an arrest warrant against Sosa in 2000, who had already fled the country and lived in Calgary as a Canadian citizen.

But information about his involvement in the Las Dos Erres massacre took time to trickle north. In the meantime, Sosa married a U.S. citizen and applied and received American citizenship in 1997, once again lying about his military service.

Eventually, U.S. officials caught wind of the subterfuge, leading him to be extradited from Canada to the United States and sentenced to 10 years in an American prison for immigration fraud in 2014.

Three years later, Canadian immigration officials began the lengthy legal process of asking a court to revoke Sosa’s citizenship and declare him inadmissible to Canada.

Sosa originally participated in the pre-trial process before refusing to participate in the 2024 trial after Lafrenière denied his “deliberate tactics to frustrate and delay the hearing.”

He repeatedly denied his involvement in the Las Dos Erres massacre as well as having lied to Canadian and U.S. immigration officials.

In his ruling, Lafrenière reserves exceptionally harsh language for Sosa.

“Mr. Sosa denies that he was present at Las Dos Erres when the massacre took place; however, I place no credence in anything he says,” Lafrenière wrote.

“Indeed, I consider Mr Sosa to be a consummate liar.”

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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