Body of US soldier killed in Iraq to be sent to native Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY (AFP) Apr 06, 2003
The body of a US soldier killed in Iraq is to be repatriated to his native Guatemala, but he will not receive official honors because he was not fighting under his country's flag, the foreign minister of the Central American country said Sunday.

Jose Antonio Gutierrez, 28, a US Marine who was a permanent resident but not a citizen of the United States, was killed in Iraq on March 21.

His body was to be shipped to Guatemala from California late Monday, according to Foreign Minister Edgar Gutierrez.

"We remember him as a noble Guatemelan who gave his blood," he said, adding nonetheless that there would be no official ceremony "because he died under the flag of another country's army."

Gutierrez grew up in abject poverty in the streets of the Guatemalan capital, and lost his parents in the mid-1980s. In 1997 he was arrested trying to enter the United States illegally, but eventually was granted asylum and later joined the US Marine Corps.

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