Army’s civil war files will be opened

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said he will open to the public army files on massacres and torture by soldiers during the country’s 36-year civil war.

Almost 250,000 people were killed or disappeared during the 1960-96 conflict between leftist guerrillas and the government. The army committed more than 80% of the slayings, according to a United Nations-backed truth commission.

The commission, which compiled thousands of interviews with victims after the 1996 peace accords, identified no officials, in part because the army files were not open to the public.

Colom’s uncle, Manuel Colom Argueta, a leftist politician with presidential ambitions, was killed by the army in 1979 in a well-coordinated ambush. Colom beat a right-wing former general in January’s election.