Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of former Guatemalan police chief Erwin Sperisen, keeping his 14-year prison sentence in place. The court handed down its ruling after Geneva’s appeals court found Sperisen guilty of complicity in the 2006 extrajudicial killings of seven jail inmates at Pavon prison near Guatemala City. Sperisen held the role of Guatemala’s civil police chief from July 2004 to March 2007. During that period, Switzerland’s top court said, a police operation was carried out under his command to regain control of the prison, during which several inmates died. The case has gone through years of trials, retrials, and appeals. Sperisen was first sentenced in 2014 by a Geneva court to life in prison, but in 2017 the Federal Supreme Court ordered a retrial due to what it said was the use of faulty evidence. A Geneva appeals court sentenced him again in 2018, this time to 15 years. The Federal Supreme Court confirmed that verdict in 2019 before reversing its decision in 2023 after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a judge in the Geneva case had appeared not to be impartial. In September 2024, Geneva’s appeals court convicted Sperisen and set his sentence at 14 years. In rejecting his latest bid, the Federal Supreme Court said the appeal was rejected “insofar as it was admissible,” including that Sperisen could not rely on the fact that another individual facing prosecution connected to the events had been acquitted in Austria. His lawyers have also launched another bid to have the case re-examined by the European Court of Human Rights.