Ex-colonel who killed Bishop Gerardi goes free

This is very disappointing.

Byron Disrael Lima Estrada was freed for good behaviour, the Roman Catholic church said, after serving 11 years for his conviction in the murder of Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi. Estrada, 80, had been hospitalised for the past seven years.

The church archdiocese said it had received formal notification of the release on Friday.

Gerardi was killed in April 1998, two days after releasing a report on abuses of power during the country's 36-year civil war. Many of the cases were blamed on the army. Estrada was given 20 years' jail over Gerardi's death.

Gerardi, a human rights campaigner of many years stranding, was bludgeoned to death outside his home in Guatemala City on 26 April 1998. He was 72.

Two days earlier he had released a scathing report on human rights abuses attributed to the military during the 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996.

The report, which for the first time named individual officers allegedly responsible for many of the 150,000 killings that took place during the conflict, apparently incensed Estrada and other senior officers.