which worked for many years with many of the rural communities that were devastated, taking testimonies and training local animators to encourage people to come forward to give testimony. That was a very big help for the Truth Commission because when they started a lot of these communities had the experience of giving testimonies. The mandate of the Commission stretched the whole 34 years of war from 1962-1996. The worst years were in the 1980s, which was the period of the scorched earth massacres. For the period covering 34 years, the Truth Commission, using its own testimonies and data that had been accumulated, estimated that 200 000 people were killed in Guatemala’s civil war. The Truth Commission documented 669 mass graves in the early 1990s in the Maya regions. The Maya region is currently the centre of the genocide trial in Guatemala, one of the hardest hit areas in the whole country Responsibility for the rights violations in Guatemala The Truth Commission (TC) notes that the state forces committed 93% of the violations. That could include the army. That could also include the army organised under a civil control system; that is villagers who were coerced to participate in massacres, sometimes in conjunction with the army. It also comprised other authorities like the police, which operated mainly in the urban areas. 3% of the atrocities were held to have been committed by insurgents and 4% by others who were unidentified. Over 80% of the violations documented by the TC were committed against Mayans especially in the 1980s. At the same time as the TC, a number of truth telling projects were taking place, including community level projects through memorial museums where family members would write the names of relatives killed. Exhumations were taking place to facilitate forensic investigations. It took quite some time before the genocide trial could start in Guatemala. A number of years passed before the genocide trials could start in Guatamala, but right after the Truth Commission published its report, the 2000 Nobel Prize winner Roberto Matthews presented a genocide case against 12 high-level army officers in a Spanish court. At that time it would have been impossible to prosecute a genocide case in Guatemala so activists were using Spanish courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction which states that crimes against humanity can be prosecuted anywhere. So the case of Guatemala went through Spanish courts for a few years and eventually was stalled because Guatemala refused to extradite the accused. Finally, in 2011 several high level officers were arrested for human rights violations in Guatemala. In February 2012 Rio Smat, who had been a member of the congress after he had ended his term as de facto head of state lost Truth Commissions: the Best Practices 51