Pedro Pimentel Rios has been sentenced to 6,060 years in jail (Reuters)
Pedro Pimentel Rios has been sentenced to 6,060 years in jail (Reuters)

Former Guatemalan special forces soldier Pedro Pimentel Rios has been sentenced to 6,060 years in prison for his role in the killing of 201 people during a 1982 massacre.

Rios, 54, is the fifth member of the elite military force to be convicted for what has been known as the Dos Erres massacre in the northern Guatemalan village during the 1960-96 civil war.

The sentence specified 30 years for each of the 201 deaths, plus 30 years for crimes against humanity.

In December 1982, 20 soldiers from the special unit of the Guatemalan army known as the Kaibiles stormed the village of Dos Erres searching for missing weapons.

Over three days, the soldiers systematically killed hundreds of men, women and children. Soldiers bludgeoned villagers with sledgehammers, threw them down a well, and raped women and girls before killing them, according to court papers filed in a case brought by US prosecutors against another Kaibile soldier.

Rios had lived in Santa Ana, California and worked in a sweater factory before being arrested in 2010 and extradited to Guatemala.

He denied any involvement in the massacre.

The ruling is the latest attempt by Guatemala to clean up its bloody record of civil war atrocities, which claimed 200,000 lives.

A judge sentenced three other former special force soldiers to 6,060 years and a former second lieutenant to 6,066 years for their roles in the massacre.