A Guatemalan court Thursday convicted five peasants of abducting and killing a prominent Mayan lawyer and clergyman, and sentenced each to 100 years in prison. Antonio Pop, a religious and intellectual leader in the northern town of Coban, was the first local lawyer to practise law in the native Mayan language. His 2002 killing outraged indigenous people and human rights groups. Under Guatemalan law, the defendants can serve maximum terms of 50 years despite the court's higher sentence. Pop was kidnapped in October 2002 and his body was found two months later at the bottom of a 40-metre well. Detectives found he had been fatally shot shortly after being kidnapped. He apparently was killed after his family refused to pay a 26,000-dollar ransom. --SP 0008 Local Time 2108 GMT
