Dirección de Inteligencia del Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional
The Dirección de Inteligencia del Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional (DIEMDN - D2) (German: "Intelligence Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces") is the military intelligence service of Guatemala . It was also called G2 after the corresponding command area of the General Staff .
history
Today's DIEMDN emerged from the former Oficina de Inteligencia Militar , which was greatly expanded during the civil war in the 1960s and acted as a secret police in practically all areas of the state. Thanks to support from Israel , the USA and later Taiwan , a computer center was set up in 1979 , a secret service school in 1980 and then a telecommunications and electrical engineering school. Guatemalan intelligence workers were trained by numerous foreign services in the 1980s and supported domestically by around 300 Israeli experts.
In 1983 the Dirección de Inteligencia Militar had more than 2,000 full-time employees and numerous informants for the so-called Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil , the vigilante groups that fought the communist guerrillas , especially in rural areas . The Dirección de Intelligencia Militar committed numerous crimes with the armed forces and special forces during these years and achieved notoriety under its informal name G-2. For this reason, the American government under Jimmy Carter discontinued military aid for Guatemala in 1977, but continued to indirectly support Direccion de Inteligencia Militar .
With the introduction of a democratic constitution in 1986, the military intelligence service also received a legal basis. As a counterbalance, a civilian intelligence service was introduced at the Presidential Office, which, however, did not do justice to its intended role due to frequent personnel changes and its illegal archives. A small civilian intelligence service was also established in the area of the Ministry of the Interior, but it lacked a sufficient legal basis and qualified personnel. For this reason, the military intelligence service remained the only “effective” organization of its kind in Guatemala.
Since the peace agreement came into force in 1997, DIMDN has been greatly reduced in size and lost much of its former importance. In recent years, the service has repeatedly been suspected of building underground political power structures in the state. On the other hand, there were also efforts to reassign the service to new tasks in the field of combating organized crime and to ensure appropriate cooperation with the special investigation and drug investigation services of the Policía Nacional Civil until the Ministry of the Interior has its own efficient intelligence service.
In the future, a new office at the Presidential Office will coordinate the intelligence services and a body to monitor the services will be set up in Congress .