Charges Dropped Against Former Guatemalan Dictator

A Guatemalan Court dropped charges against former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, which alleged the former general orchestrated a violent protest in 2003 that left one journalist dead. 

Rios Montt led a successful military coup in 1982. He led one of the bloodiest regimes during the country’s civil war in which hundreds of thousand of mostly indigenous Guatemalans were killed, tortured and disappeared.

Despite this, at the time former President Ronald Reagan said Montt was "totally dedicated to democracy" and "getting a bum rap."

Montt has yet to be indicted for the thousand of deaths he was responsible for during his rule between 1982-83.