Guatemala City - On Friday, the court ruled three men guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 40 years in prison for Guatemalan soldiers and paramilitary personnel who raped indigenous women during a rebellion that had been struggling to destroy the country's 36-year civil war.

Thirty-six women from the Maya Achi indigenous community stepped forward in 2011 to seek justice for the abuse suffered between 1981 and 1985. They come from Rabinal, a small town about 55 miles (88 kilometers) north of the capital.

Six of them testified by three men who were convicted on Friday.

When the panel of three judges of all women was preparing to announce the verdict, several older women surrounded a young woman who translated the judge's words from Spanish to Achi.

The court president, Judge María Eugenia Castellanos, said the women were brave enough to testify repeatedly. "They are lonely crimes that stigmatize women. It's not easy to talk about them," she said.

Judge Marling Mayela González Arrivillaga said there was no doubt that the testimony of the women.

In 2022, five other paramilitary personnel — men from areas where soldiers trained to help root in rebels — were sentenced to rape women and sentenced to 30 years in prison. No attempt to do a soldier.

The civil war in Guatemala compared the army and police with the left-wing insurgents. It ended with the signing of the 1996 peace agreement.

Of the 36 women who initially stood up, 7 died. At the youngest, he was 19 years old.

Among the women who testified in this trial was Pedrina Ixpatá. She is 63 now, but she was 21 when she said she was beaten. One of the convicted men, Félix Tum Ramírez, pointed out her soldiers who had been in the square earlier in the day.

"At 9 p.m., they came to the house and took me to a big tank. They pushed their heads over the tank's head and asked me out to ask me questions when I was about to drown, but I said I knew nothing," ixpatá said.

Later, she was taken to a room at a local military base where she said soldiers raped her. "I can't accept it. My whole body was hurt," Ixtapá said. She was pregnant, had miscarriage, and had no children. Tum Ramírez was sentenced to rape two women and instructed to be raped by other women.

The Associated Press usually doesn't name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they publicly stand up like ixpatá.

One defendant, Pedro Sánchez, told the court Friday before the ruling was sentenced to him not being involved. He was convicted of raping two women.

"I know nothing about the reason they accuse us of being innocent, I know nothing about it," Sarenchis testified before the verdict. Simeón Eringquez Gómez, the third paramilitary, was also convicted of raping two women.

Anthropologist Aura Cumes testified during the trial as a forensic expert, saying women in the war suffered differently than men.

“Sexual violence is a planned and intentional approach,” she said. “This is effective for the Army’s goals because the impact of these cruel behaviors on women is the impact of creating distrust, undermining healthy relationships between men and women, dividing family units and undermining the social structure of the community.”

Another woman testified at the closing ceremony that she had been washing clothes in the river while paramilitary personnel and soldiers forced her into it and told her to strip. She was first raped by paramilitary personnel and then raped by soldiers.

She explained through an interpreter that they took her husband that day and she would never see him again. She was four months pregnant at that time.

The UN's Historical Clarification Committee for Investigating Human Rights Violations During the Civil War recorded 1,465 rape cases during the conflict. The report says that in 89% of the cases, the women were indigenous Mayans.