Nicknamed “The Viking” for his red hair, Sperisen inherited his Swiss citizenship from his father.
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The former head of Guatemala’s national police force, Erwin Sperisen, faces re-trial on Monday in Geneva for his alleged involvement in killing ten prisoners.
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The case will be retried by the Geneva cantonal court after the Swiss Federal Court partially upheld an appeal by Sperisen, a Swiss-Guatemalan dual national, last July.
Sperisen was first found guilty for his involvement in the killing of several prisoners in Guatemala in 2006, when he was head of the country’s police. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Geneva court in 2014. The verdict was upheld in 2015, when his first appeal against a lifetime jail sentence was denied.
The Federal Court, however, last year ordered a re-trial of the case, citing “arbitrary” and “incomplete proof” on the part of the Geneva court. Sperisen is seeking damages from the Genevan authorities, according to his lawyers.
Since the Federal Court’s decision, Sperisen has been placed under house arrest, after having spent five years in a Geneva prison. Nicknamed “The Viking” for his red hair, he inherited his Swiss citizenship from his father.
He was tried in Switzerland because the country does not extradite its citizens. The case, which has been going on for several years in the Geneva courts, represents a rare instance of Swiss justice trying a defendant for crimes committed in another country.
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Guatemala police chief faces Geneva court
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Sperisen allegedly asked his subordinates to make it seem as though ten detainees had clashed with police in three separate incidents before they were shot. According to the Geneva prosecutor’s office, Sperisen, because of his rank, played a decisive role in the killings. In one case, he allegedly carried out one of the executions himself.…
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The Geneva prosecutor’s office said on Friday that Erwin Sperisen had been arrested on the basis of evidence submitted at the end of last year by the Guatemalan authorities, and more recent investigations. Sperisen, who has joint Guatemalan and Swiss nationality, resigned from his post at the head of the national police in March 2007,…
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Erwin Sperisen, the former head of Guatemala’s national police, is to be freed from prison in Switzerland ahead of his November trial.
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The Swiss-Guatemalan dual citizen was jailed for life in 2014 for involvement in the deaths of ten prison inmates in Guatemala between 2005-2006. But earlier this year judges ordered a retrial because his defence was compromised by irregularities in the original hearing. “We will be seeking damages of more than a million francs from canton…
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.