Guatemalan prez says US right out to get him

Former president Alfonso Portillo is back in the news complaining that his human rights have been violated. He is fighting extradition to the US where he is wanted on money laundering charges. I hadn't heard the conspiracy theory behind his persecution by the US government.

"It is revenge that was organized and a result of a conspiracy among certain sectors, as much those in economic power in Guatemala as my enemies and ideological adversaries in the United States, to get revenge against me and remove me from the political scene," Portillo said in an exclusive interview with CNN en Español broadcast Thursday morning....

Portillo said right-wing political adversaries in the United States engineered the charges against him.

"In the United States it is a revenge of the richest group of the American right. They are charging me for being the only president who did not support with his signature nor with his permission the invasion in Iraq," Portillo said. "So, I know that it is not only illegal. I know that it is eminently political, my detention in Guatemala."

So the richest group of the American right is out to punish Portillo for his opposition to the Iraq war. That's pretty funny.

And about the likelihood that he'll get a fair trial in the US?

"I have confidence that at least I will have a transparent, impartial, objective trial that is based on reliable evidence and not just testimonies that are based on falsehoods," he said. A fair trial would not be possible in Guatemala, he added.

Wasn't he found not guilty in a Guatemalan court?