A lawyer who allegedly arranged his own murder in order to frame the Guatemalan government and avenge the death of his lover is the subject of new documentary, I Will Be Murdered.
Rodrigo Rosenberg provoked riots across Guatemala when he named the former president and other senior political figures as his killers in a pre-recorded video released at his funeral in 2009.
Cambridge and Harvard educated Mr Rosenberg was shot five times while cycling through Guatemala City. “If you are currently watching or listening to this message, it’s because I was murdered by President Alvaro Colom,” Mr Rosenberg said in the video.
After demonstrations that nearly succeeded in achieving his aim, a UN-backed probe led by prosecutor Carlos Castresana concluded that Mr Rosenberg had set up his own death in order to bring down the president he believed had killed his lover, Marjorie Musa.
Ms Musa was the daughter of businessman Khalil Musa, one of Mr Rosenberg’s legal clients. Both father and daughter were shot dead in their car while waiting at a traffic light.
Mr Rosenberg believed that the government carried out the hit because Mr Musa had been fighting alleged presidential corruption.
But Mr Castresana cleared the president of any wrongdoing after finding that Mr Rosenberg had arranged for two cousins of his ex-wife to hire hitmen to kill him.
Justin Webster, who directed I Will Be Murdered, said that Mr Rosenberg definitely had himself killed.
He added: “At the beginning I wasn’t sure Rosenberg had acted alone, but I came to believe that Castresana’s probe was accurate in this respect.”
Nick Fraser, the documentary’s executive producer, agreed, describing Mr Rosenberg as a tragic perfectionist. He said: “You have to read it as a suicide, the only reason that it’s not a suicide is that he wished to do something with his death.”
Mr Webster described the story as “an unfathomable parable about impunity”.
I Will Be Murdered will be screened on BBC4 on February 25.
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