Former Quetzaltenango chief of police arrested in Lose Angeles

While transitional justice cases move slowly along, Guatemala and the United States continue to cooperate in the arrest and expulsion of those Guatemalans who fled to the United States after participating in civil war era crimes.

Catalino Esteban Valiente Alonzo, 77, was arrested Friday in Los Angeles after being indicted by a federal grand jury earlier in the week, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

Prosecutors said Valiente was charged in 1987 with killing two activists in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second-largest city and where Valiente was chief of the National Police. He pleaded not guilty and a trial was set for April 10.

Valiente was convicted twice but both convictions were overturned on appeal. An arrest warrant issued in 1993 for Valiente was rescinded in 2015.

Valiente could face ten years in a US prison if convicted. Authorities allege that he committed visa fraud because he failed to disclose to US authorities that he had been charged with killing two individuals in Guatemala. When he entered the US in 2013, those charges were still open. Therein lies the fraud.