By Paul Jeffrey

   Guatemala City, 18 February (ENI) - The government's main suspect in the assassination
of a Roman Catholic bishop was released February 17 after a judge here ruled there was
insufficient evidence to hold him any longer.
   Father Mario Orantes was let go after almost seven months in custody. He is a Catholic
priest who shared a house with Bishop Juan Gerardi, the auxiliary bishop of Guatemala City who
was murdered last April 26.
   Judge Henry Monroy ordered Orantes, who has been hospitalized under police guard for
several weeks, to be released immediately, but he warned the priest that he remained under
investigation.
   Orantes thanked God for the news, and also thanked Monroy “for being so upright and
objective in your judgements that you have managed to see the truth and realize my innocence.” 
   After Orantes was arrested last July 22, government prosecutor Otto Ardon pulled out all
the stops to make a case against the priest. Yet Ardón's accusations seemed more to resemble a
cheap police novel than the truth. A former attorney general, Acisclo Valladares, was hired by 
the country's bishops to review the investigation, and Valladares reported a long list of anomalies in Ardon's work on the case. Under pressure, Ardón resigned in December. A short time later, the judge also withdrew from the case.
   The new prosecutor, Celvin Galindo, was appointed in January but has had little time for
the Gerardi investigation among the dozens of cases he's been assigned. His boss, Attorney
General Adolfo Gonzalez, requested on February 5 that Orantes be released on “humanitarian
grounds” into the custody of church officials, although Gonzalez said the government wouldn't
drop the charges against Orantes. It was an irregular request, since Guatemalan law forbids bail
to murder suspects. Church officials worried aloud about a trap. Yet the new judge on the case,
Henry Monroy, turned down the bail request on February 9 and ordered the prosecutor to prepare to try the case.
   On February 11, the Guatemalan bishops conference turned up the heat, sending foreign
leaders and human rights groups a copy of the Valladares report and asking their intervention
with Guatemalan authorities. The same day, the president of the Guatemalan Congress, Leonel
López, announced the legislative body would conduct its own investigation of the investigation.
   Galindo responded by leaking portions of a secret report of the crime scene prepared by
the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Although far from presenting a conclusive picture of
what happened the night Gerardi was murdered, the 10-page report does suggest, according
people who have seen it, that Gerardi was killed by more than one person and that the attack took place in at least two locations in the parish house he shared with Orantes. 
   It wasn't enough, however, to convince Monroy that the state had a solid case against
Orantes.
   The priest's freedom takes some of the heat off the government to resolve the case, for
which it has paid a huge political price. Everywhere government officials go abroad,
diplomats–including Vatican representatives–have brought up the case, often hinting about
financial repercussions. Official patience has worn thin. Under questioning on January 22,
President Alvaro Arzú angrily ordered journalists: “Don't ask me any more questions about that
case!”
   With Orantes free, the case may quietly settle into history along with many other
unsolved political killings here.
   There are other leads, however. The archdiocesan human rights office, which Gerardi
founded, is keeping in hiding an unnamed taxi driver who saw a car with military plates outside
Gerardi's home the night he was killed. The man went into hiding shortly after the murder, and
two other people driving his taxi were shot in death squad fashion in the weeks that followed.
One died and the other narrowly survived. The witness himself was eventually grabbed off the
street but says he managed to escape from his captors while they were discussing with someone
on the radio where his body should be dumped.
   The man's testimony supports the most popular theory, namely that the military killed
Gerardi, just two days after the prelate released a report blaming the military for most of the
violence during this country's recently concluded civil war. It's commonly believed that the
killing was meant as a sign that while it may be permissible to talk about the past, people aren't
permitted to do anything about it, especially not to think about taking to trial those responsible
for the bloodshed.
   Other theories have surfaced. One recent one, proposed by a judge who is the brother of a
military official linked to the case, argues that Gerardi was killed by a mafia-like gang of priests
and religious who stole sacred art objects and sold them on the black market.
   According to Edgar Gutierrez, who directed the church's investigation into the war's
violence, this latest theory of why Gerardi was killed is part of “a psychological war” against the
church, conducted by military intelligence agents who are “faithful disciples of Goebbels,” and
who want to “destroy the moral–and thus political–authority of the only institution that has
maintained a coherent discourse” about national problems in the post-war era.
   Gutierrez said he doubts criminal investigative techniques will ever lead to the killers of
Gerardi. Only a “political investigation” will produce the culprits, he said.

-- A United Nations-supervised truth commission will present its report on Guatemala's violent
past on February 25. The commission had originally planned to present its 3,400 page report in
January, but glitches in a complicated computer data base delayed the preparation of the final
document.
   The commission conducted 9,000 interviews for the report. Most of those who gave
testimony requested anonymity. According to Otilia Lux de Coti, a Maya K'iche' educator and
one of three commission directors, many people who were interviewed argued that “if they knew
their testimony would lead to the jailing of 20 generals, they would let us use their names. Yet
since they feel there is no justice in Guatemala, they weren't willing to take that chance.”
   The U.N. report will place most of the blame for the decades of violence on the military,
much as a similar Catholic Church-sponsored report released last April.
   Many here are concerned by rumors that shortly after the U.N. document is made public,
a prominent political activist will be assassinated, just as Bishop Juan Gerardi was killed two
days after he released the church report.