<p>GUATEMALA CITY &mdash; The United States on Friday deported back to Guatemala a former soldier suspected of helping carry out a massacre during the Central American country’s civil war. </p>
<p>José Mardoqueo Ortiz Morales is the fourth ex-Guatemalan soldier deported by U.S. authorities since 2010. Soldiers of a special army unit known as “kaibiles” are accused of participating in the killing of more than 200 people in the village of Las Dos Erres in 1982.</p>
<p>The slaughter went unpunished for years — even after Guatemalan authorities issued 17 arrest warrants. In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights demanded the country prosecute the perpetrators.</p>
<p>Four former soldiers were sentenced in 2011 to more than 6,000 years for the killings. A year later, another suspect deported by the U.S. was sentenced. Prison terms of more than 50 years are largely symbolic, since that is the maximum sentence allowed under Guatemalan law.</p>
<p>Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war pitted the army and police against leftist rebels, and resulted in more than 200,000 deaths.</p>