Edition: U.S. / Global

World News Briefs; American in Guatemala Fasts to Free Husband

Published: October 19, 1994

An American woman has been staging a hunger strike outside Guatemala City's National Palace for more than a week to try to get news of her husband, a Guatemalan guerrilla, and she said today she would refuse to eat until he is freed.

Jennifer Harbury contends that the army has held her husband, a leftist rebel commander, in a secret military prison since March 1992. "I'm tired, but I will keep up with my hunger strike until they hand over my husband to the law courts here," said Ms. Harbury, 43, a lawyer.

The Guatemalan army maintains that her husband, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, killed himself after being wounded in battle two years ago.

But a rebel from Mr. Bamaca's unit who escaped from an army base in the western province of San Marcos in late 1992 has testified before the United Nations that he saw the guerrilla commander in a secret military prison there several times.