GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (Reuters) -- In Maya Indian Catarina
                 Pablo's mind, the elderly Japanese tourist who stroked her baby's head on
                 April 29, 2000, was a bloodthirsty Satanist hoping to rip out the infant's
                 heart with a hidden dagger for use in a satanic ritual.

                 Minutes after she cried "They want to steal my child!" 300 angry villagers used
                 sticks, machetes and an ax to hack another Japanese tourist and a Guatemalan
                 bus driver to death, setting the latter's remains alight with gasoline.

                 A trial that saw villagers dressed in dazzling traditional Mayan costumes
                 testifying in the Mam language with the help of translators recently ended. A
                 judge on Monday will pass sentence on Pablo and two other villagers accused
                 of inciting the group to kill, Lucas Perez Mendoza and Edmundo Lorenzo Bravo.

                 Public prosecutors have asked for up to 30 years in prison on murder charges
                 for the three. Defense lawyers insist the impoverished suspects -- all from the
                 highland village of Todos Santos Cuchumatan -- are innocent scapegoats picked
                 from the crowd at random.

                 Whatever the verdict, the chilling events of April 2000 are a grim reminder of
                 the devastating power that rumors, however far-fetched they may seem, can
                 have in isolated parts of Guatemala's Mayan Indian highlands, which are still
                 recovering from the country's 36-year civil war.

                 Rumor circulated before slayings

                 Radio stations throughout the jagged-peaked Huehuetenango department, which
                 borders Mexico, broadcast warnings after receiving a fax from the local
                 government on April 27, two days before the killings, denying rumors it had
                 granted Satanists permission to perform rituals.

                 "That rumor generated a group psychosis," Samuel Villalta, the public
                 prosecutor in the case, told Reuters.

                 Prosecutors say Perez Mendoza, a vendor selling combs, mirrors and T-shirts
                 in Todos Santos' colorful marketplace, urged villagers to kill police and
                 foreigners after officers defended the elderly man and a younger female
                 Japanese tourist from the mob's beatings.

                 According to testimonies, the crowd then turned on 40-year-old Japanese
                 tourist Tetsuo Yamahiro, who was taking photographs of the scuffle. He died
                 from injuries that included an ax wound to the face.

                 The crowd then tried to set fire to a bus with about 20 more Japanese tourists
                 on board. When Guatemalan driver Edgar Castellanos stepped out to try to calm
                 the situation, the mob chased him down the road, hacked him to death and set
                 fire to his remains.

                 Lorenzo Bravo, part of a group that allegedly surrounded police, chiding them
                 for doing nothing to protect the children of Todos Santos, is accused of
                 whipping one officer, further inciting the crowd.

                   Copyright 2001 Reuters.