Mob Hacks Guatemalan Judge to Death By Will Weissert Associated Press Writer Tuesday, March 13, 2001; 3:17 p.m. EST GUATEMALA CITY –– More than 1,000 people in a northern Guatemalan town attacked a judge after he issued an unpopular ruling in a rape case, hacking him to death with machetes before setting his body on fire. The crowd was holding three police officers and the mayor of Senahu hostage on Tuesday. The town is 155 miles northeast of the capital, Guatemala City. Judge Hugo Martinez ruled late Monday that there was not enough evidence to hold two rape suspects who had been handed over to police after being captured by hundreds of town residents. Shortly after the ruling, Martinez was attacked by the mob as he left the courthouse, said Faustino Sanchez, a spokesman for Guatemala's national police force. The judge used a pistol to wound two attackers before he was overcome by the mob, which hacked him to death with machetes before dousing him with gasoline and burning his body, Sanchez said. Other members of the crowd then stormed a nearby city building, "seizing the mayor and three police officers who were trying to protect the accused men," Sanchez said. The fate of the two men was unclear. It was the first mob-justice killing so far this year in Guatemala, a country that has seen scores of vigilante killings annually in recent years. Police negotiators and a contingent of Guatemalan soldiers were en route to Senahu, a highlands town in the largely Indian state of Alta Verapaz. Locals in Senahu blocked entrances to the city and refused to let police officers, negotiators or reporters enter the area, said Edin Arondo, a spokesman for the volunteer fire department of the nearby city of Coban. "The situation outside the area is extremely tense," Arondo said in a phone interview. "We can only imagine what is going on inside." Since the end of a 36-year-old civil war in which 200,000 Guatemalans were killed, vigilante violence has become common here. Last year mass killings claimed 28 victims, and in the two previous years some 100 Guatemalans died at the hands of angry mobs.