Campesinas Released from Jail for Paraguay's Curuguaty Massacre

Paraguay's Supreme Court of Justice accepted Monday to release two out of the 18 campesinos in prison since the violent clashes in 2012 that ensued when more than 300 riot police forcefully evicted campesinos from a lot of land they were occupying, resulting in the death of six police officers and 11 campesinos.

RELATED:
Paraguay's Curuguaty Massacre: A Pretext for a Coup

María Fani Olmedo and Dolores López, who have finished their six years of prison sentence from their homes, were granted their habea corpus request submitted to the judges by their defense lawyers, while other fellow campesinos remained in jail.

The decision follows the liberation last week of the only other campesina who was also sentenced to house arrest over the same charges.

In May 2017, a court maintained the contested sentences issued in July 2016 that condemned the three campesinas for six years, four campesinos to prison sentences between 18 and 30 years and four other campesinos to four years.

The campesinos — including two who were minors at the time, and relatives of campesinos killed in the massacre — were officially convicted of murder, invasion of private property and other charges.

Prosecutors have only investigated the deaths of the police officers, but none of the riot police has been put on trial for the deaths of campesinos.

The activists maintained that their movement was infiltrated by undercover police who were responsible for the deaths of six police officers and 11 campesinos during the clashes.

Months before the massacre, campesinos launched the Marina Kue land occupation to reclaim farmland which they said was illegally privatized during the three-decade-long dictatorship.

After a year-long trial into the case that critics have slammed as a farce, the exact details of the eviction remain unclear. What remains unquestionable is that violence ensued as security forces exercised military-like force to remove the occupation.