The judge overseeing the historic trial against former U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt has refused to obey another judge’s ruling that the case be adjourned. Ríos Montt has been tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the slaughter of more than 1,700 people in Guatemala’s Ixil region after he seized power in 1982. But as the trial neared a close last week, an appeals judge ordered the trial’s suspension and nullified all proceedings dating back to November 2011. In response, the judge trying Ríos Montt, Judge Yassmin Barrios, said she would defy the order but suspended further testimony pending a ruling by Guatemala’s highest court.