Guatemalan ex-police chief arrested as murder suspect

Former Guatemalan police chief Marlene Blanco has been arrested for her alleged role in several extrajudicial killings in 2009, the Guatemalan government announced. Blanco and other suspects are accused of having belonged to a group that killed three people as part of a "social cleansing" operation, said spokesman Diego Alvarez of the UN-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, on Friday. Deputy Interior Minister Julio Rivera said Blanco, a former deputy interior minister herself, was arrested at her home on the outskirts of the Guatemalan capital by police and CICIG agents. Other government officials arrested in the case included former National Civil Police commissioner Edwin Nathaniel Chipix Notz; agents Wilder Valdez Lopez and Mardoqueo Lemus Lopez; and retired policemen Israel Chavez and Lino Efren Castillo. The suspects allegedly were part of a group within the police and interior ministry who, "under the command of the former deputy minister, dedicated themselves to identifying and eliminating suspects in cases of extortion of businessmen in the transportation industry," Alvarez said.