I Will Be Murdered Storyville

This programme contains some strong language, and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

TRANSLATION:

SPEECH OVER POLICE RADIO

I think that my father was somebody who was willing to go

an extra mile for anybody who was in need.

I think my father turned impossible situations into possible situations

for many people who came looking for his aid.

And something like the video, for me,

is something that would go completely in character with him.

And the fact that he would put his life on the line

for a truth to be known for somebody that he cared deeply about

is something that I would definitely consider part of my father's character.

I didn't know about the video.

But I did know he was conducting an investigation

which, at the end of the day, involved certain parts of the government

or people who worked in government.

So that was as far as I knew.

The funeral was horrible.

It was horrible - it was horrible, horrible. I mean...

Er, I think it was something that nobody expected

and since nobody expected it, it made such a profound effect, as well. I mean, there was also...

There's the murmur and, "What had happened," and, "Why was my father killed?"

NOBODY expected this to happen.

I got up, I spoke. I thanked everybody who was there

and who had helped us in accompanying us in our grieving process.

And that's when Luis Mendizabal, a very good friend of my father,

he asked me for permission - if he could say something.

He said, "All of us who are here loved Rodrigo very, very much.

"If you want to know the truth about what happened to Rodrigo,

"then here is his testimony."

The news spread very quickly about it.

Before I knew it, my phone was ringing off the hook. "Listen, I just saw the video."

And they were just speechless. That was all they managed to say - "I saw the video."

The radio station was playing it already

when I was on my way to the newsroom.

The video was all over.

Everybody was listening through their headphones.

I won't ever forget the first lines.

I mean, I think nobody can forget the first lines of that video.

"If you're watching this video, it's because the President killed me."

The reaction was, "What's going on? What happened?"

And I remember someone said, like,

"If he is dead, I mean, this is the truth."

Then El Periodico had the video uploaded immediately

and the site crashed.

THEY CHANT:

The result of that video - all the demonstrations -

was really shocking.

Demonstrations are not spontaneous any more.

It's not common to see the youth

involved in claims of justice.

That's another casualty of war.

We lost the value for life.

But that day, even a 15-year-old kid is talking about justice.

I thought, "Something is going to happen."

That video showed my father in...

one of his best moments.

The ideas that were conveyed in his message were so powerful.

The way that he was able to transmit

that we are living... a hypocritical lie.

We cannot go about saying that everything is OK when it is not OK.

There is no excuse, there is no justification why you are to behave

in a way that is not consistent with your utmost ideals.

And I think it spoke to the very heart of the person that he was.

As I was stirring up my father's office,

where you would expect to find the most important things, the most confidential things ever...

I found a file for each of his kids,

where he had pictures from when we were young,

report cards from his children.

All the things that he...

I think that he felt most precious.

He actually had love letters from my great-grandfather

to my great-grandmother.

He told me that, for him, true love actually did exist

and that it was part of any person's goal to find it and to fight for it,

and to be happy and to be content when you find love.

My father was a lawyer and I was born in England,

where my father was getting his master's degree in law, in Cambridge.

Then after that, we went to Boston and we came back here to Guatemala -

that's where my father lived ever since.

We shared the same office space.

When we worked together, we were just next door to each other,

so I had the chance to spend time with him so much -

probably more than almost anybody else.

He wanted to have a role as a lawyer as he can...

He was able to make a contribution to something good -

that's why he always stayed away from courts and political intervention

and intervention with governments and dealings with governments,

because it's frequently very corrupt.

My father prided himself on being a person who was never corrupt,

who was incorruptible.

I think the fact of him living through the war

made him be aware about how polarised our society really is.

Because after 36 years of internal conflict,

it's not just the time - it's a complete mindset.

Entire generations were born with a culture of conflict.

I believe that my father did feel the need to promote a change in that sense.

THEY SING

ON RADIO:

To be honest, I didn't really know who Carlos Castresana was.

On Tuesday I just walked into the office

and my father's partner told me, "Listen, CICIG wants to talk to you."

We went over to CICIG headquarters on Tuesday,

and we started saying everything we knew...

"Listen, my father was doing this, he was investigating that."

He needed to check my father's files and my father's personal archives

and he said he needed access to his personal folders and computers.

After a while, Carlos Castresana said,

"You can rest assured that if we need to impeach the President, we will impeach him.

"And we will prosecute him if he is, indeed, responsible for what has happened."

Immediately after we had this meeting,

we went over to my father's office and we delivered his two personal laptops -

his office computer and his laptop.

CICIG got full access.

My father was very respected for being a very impeccable businessman.

And my sister - she dedicated herself to work and her daughters.

Very sociable, you know? She was like an angel wherever she was.

They left around 15 to one.

I left two minutes later.

Like, three blocks from here,

I saw my sister's car crashed in a post

but I thought, "It cannot be my sister."

And I parked and I called her.

When the phone rang and rang and nobody answered, then I knew.

My father was attacked from the right side

and one of the bullets shot my sister.

They both died immediately.

At first glance and when it first happened,

nobody really understood what was going on.

And when I heard about the story

and I read about the story in the paper

and you see it was something like 15 shots

were fired into Khalil Musa's body...

And she was just, apparently, collateral damage to the incident.

Rodrigo was very shocked with the killings of my father and my sister.

So the day that my sister was buried, he called me that afternoon

and he said, "I need to talk to you," and I went to his apartment.

And he said, "I want you to know that I will be doing the investigation."

I was afraid that something would happen to him so I said,

"Please, Rodrigo, don't go ahead with this because we suffered enough."

But he said, "No, I will go on."

Ever since Khalil and Marjorie Musa's death, he started on a path

where he was decided - he was not going to simply accept

what we are used to accepting in our society, when something terrible happens.

And he was determined to take this to the last consequences.

He went to Luis Mendizabal.

I recall my father speaking of Luis Mendizabal as this person

who had a lot of information about what was going on in Guatemala, in government.

Somebody my dad trusted implicitly.

This used to be my father's apartment.

About a year later, after he died, I moved in.

For me, the presence of my dad was the fact that he always came back

from work at lunchtime, to have lunch with his family.

When he was a dad is when I feel that he was at his happiest,

where he was most fulfilled.

One of the first presents I had from my father was a Walkman,

a really, really small Walkman, even before I could walk.

LITTLE BOY SOBS

I was ten when my parents got divorced.

We were coming back from this country club

and my father told me, "Listen, I have something to tell you,"

and he told me, "Your mother and I are getting divorced."

That was actually the first time I ever saw my father cry.

I think my father felt that his father's shortcomings were

something that he was never willing to accept for himself.

And he told me that afterwards, that he actually never ever even

considered the possibility of him getting a divorce.

He always wanted to be a role model,

somebody who is always there for his children.

He had a responsibility to form a family and a home together

and he couldn't do it.

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION:

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION:

My father was surrounded by situations in his life where

he found the law to be helpless in his aid.

He lived in a place where you were used to people disappearing,

you were used to people getting killed.

When he was very young, when he was about 18 years old

or 20 years old, his brother was killed, he was murdered.

My father had these horrible situations where

he really was helpless to do anything about them.

My uncle as well, he disappeared and then showed up a couple of days

later, dead. His nephews, actually two of his nephews were killed

also in horrible circumstances. They showed up a couple of days later.

They were never really people with ties to government or with ties to

political involvement, or something of the sort, it was just violence.

It was huge news, breaking news.

It was a big success.

You don't get crimes solved like that here.

It was less than four months

and you had someone accused of pulling the trigger.

We didn't have information about how the investigation was going on.

The newsroom got this anonymous envelope with text messages,

love text messages from Rosenberg.

You know, I thought, "How marvellous."

But then I began reading them.

There is a certain point when you realise that there was a very

strong relationship.

We never published a story on them.

I found my father at home, crying.

He was obviously going through one of the worst moments of his life.

When I got close up, I asked him what had happened, he just said,

"They killed her, they killed her!"

And I was like, "They killed who?"

And he said, "They killed Marjorie."

It was at that exact moment that I realised who my father was

having a relationship with after so much time.

I had seen, obviously, the signs and the indications that he was

with somebody and I was aware that he was having a relationship with

somebody, but I really never knew until that moment

in time that the person he had the relationship with was Marjorie.

What CICIG told me is, "We traced back this phone number

"and we linked it to the place of purchase and we were able to

"find some cameras in the store where it was purchased.

"Even though the payphone was paid in cash, there's a clear video

"depicting Luis Lopez as the person who was buying this cell phone."

I remember that the first thought that went through my mind was,

"I don't know how or why, but I know he is not guilty of being

"part of a conspiracy against my father."

More than his worker, he was his friend.

My father confided in Luis some things

he wouldn't even confide in us.

I told him, I said, "Listen, Luis,

"I know that my father has trusted you with

"an amazing amount of information and you were a very close friend

"of my father's, and I will make sure with every force that I have

"and anything in my power, that you will not get in trouble with this.

"But if you ever made any promise to my father that you cannot

"tell anybody about this, you need to tell me about it now

"and you need to tell CICIG about it."

It wasn't until the day before my father died

that I perceived my father was in danger, immediate danger.

I got a call from my father very early.

He called me over and offered me to go to Antigua.

From the moment I told my father I was going with him,

he hesitated in terms of which car we should take,

where we should meet.

We started going out of his house and he was looking

over his shoulder and making sure there was nobody there.

And he said that

he just simply felt there was something that he had to do,

because he could not be at peace -

simply accepting the fact that two people he cared very much about

were murdered and nobody was going to do anything about it.

And he said,

"Even if that means that I'm willing to risk my life to do it."

When I heard that, I was obviously concerned

and I turned to my father and said, "Listen, this is not something

"that you have to do. This is something where you can protect yourself."

He told me he had an offer from a person to leave Guatemala

and go to, I think it was Washington,

and to present a claim before some international court.

He told me, "Listen, if something were to eventually happen

"in terms of what's going on, you have to understand that this

"is not your fight.

"This is my battle, not yours."

I was infuriated at first.

I was appalled.

First thing that went through my mind is, "Of course, why not?"

I mean, that's the easiest way to go.

Because at the same time, there was somebody to blame

but there was nobody to blame.

I told him,

"We will have our own private opinion about it from here on in.

"I do want to ask you one thing," and I asked a favour of him, and I told him,

"If tomorrow in your press conference you feel that my father

"was an honourable man,

"then I ask you to please say it during your press conference."

The newsroom, we were all paying attention to that press conference,

and I remember very well that it was like shock after shock,

and the reporters were, "Oh! Dios mio!"

And then we all kept quiet hearing the rest of the story.

You can never fully accept or you can never comprehend that...

..how something so intricate would have been possible.

You don't come to terms with something as difficult as that.

The sudden death of Marjorie Musa,

was something that I think affected him greatly.

The worst part for him in all of this, was that he found himself

completely impotent to do something to make it right.

I think that dismantled him.

My father was an amazing person, regardless of the way

that his life came to an end.

The way he lived was, for us, the most important thing.

Subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing by Red Bee Media Ltd