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Hello and welcome to Witness the History Podcast here on the BBC World Service.

I'm Mike Lanchin. In November of 2018 a court in Guatemala sentenced a soldier

to more than 5,000 years in jail for his part in the massacre of more than 200 civilians during the country's civil war.

I've been speaking to one of the few survivors of the killings, who was a child at the time,

and was later adopted by one of the killers. I must warn listeners that

his tale is very distressing. It's the early hours of December the 6th, 1982.

And in northern Guatemala, soldiers from an elite anti-Gorilla unit

are banging on doors, waking up residents in a small indigenous Mayan village called

Doss Erres. So we all get up and my dad, who is it?

The person outside is, never mind, just open the door or we will kick the door down.

Romero or Sordio Cristales, just five years old at the time, was at home asleep with his parents

and six siblings.

His terrified father opened the door and a group of soldiers rushed in. They tied my dad hands on the back and they put a rope on the neck of my mom.

The end of the rope, they tied my mom's head and then they march us from our house to the

center of the village so on the center of the village was a school and a church.

The soldiers herded Rameiro, his mother and younger siblings into the church,

...