Guatemala City:  Five former paramilitary members have been sentenced to 780 years in prison for massacring 26 people during one of the more horrifying incidents in Guatemala's long civil war.

The convictions of the five men, former members of peasant milita groups sponsored by the military, follows years of trials and hearings, court officials said yesterday.

Court system spokesman Guillermo Melgar noted the convictions can still be appealed.

A postwar UN study reported that a military-backed "self-defense patrol" came to the Achi Mayan Indian hamlet of Rio Negro in March 1982 looking for rebel sympathisers.

Rio Negro men who survived a February massacre of 74 people had fled. So the attackers looted the houses, rounded up the women and children and led them up the mountain.

According to the study, many of the women were forced to dance, some were raped, and 70 were slain - often after torture. Killed with them were 107 children. A few children were spared, but forced to serve the patrols as near-slaves, according to victims rights organisations.

The UN report noted that the villagers had resisted the military government s plans to build a dam there and said soldiers suspected villagers of collaborating with leftist rebels.

The maximum sentence of 30 years in prison for each of the 26 deaths was imposed on convicts who were also sentenced to pay reparations to families of the victims.

Source : PTI