Foreign Adoptions: Report Claims that Guatemalan Army Stole Children

September 12, 2009, CNN. (CNN) -- The Guatemalan army stole at least 333 children and sold them for adoption in other countries during the Central American nation's 36-year civil war, a government report has concluded. " Around 45,000 people are believed to have disappeared during Guatemala's civil war, 5,000 of them children.

Many of those children ended up in the United States, as well as Sweden, Italy and France, said the report's author and lead investigator, Marco Tulio Alvarez.
In some cases, the report said, parents were killed so the children could be taken and given to government-operated agencies to be adopted abroad. In other instances, the children were abducted without physical harm to the parents.
"This was a great abuse by the state," Alvarez told CNN on Friday.
Investigators started examining records in May 2008 for a period that spanned from 1977-89, said Alvarez, the director of the Guatemalan Peace Archive, a commission established by President Alvaro Colom."