To help the judges make up their minds, Rios Montt's party, the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front, stacked the court with sympathisers and organised riots in the city while they were deliberating. Bands of ski-mask-wearing thugs rampaged through the financial district and the centre of the city, smashing windows and terrorising locals. An elderly journalist died of a heart attack as the mob pursued him down the street.

Rios Montt symbolises a blood-drenched nightmare for many Guatemalans. He was responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the country's three-decade-long civil war, in which more than 200,000 people, mostly from the indigenous Mayan Indian population, died. Rios Montt's coup in 1982 marked the start of the most vicious 18 months of the conflict when up to 60,000 Indians were slaughtered in army-sponsored terror campaigns throughout the highlands.

Campaigning in villages ringed with mass graves, Rios Montt is receiving surprising support from the Mayan populace he terrorised two decades ago. Indians bussed in from the countryside formed the backbone of the riots last month. Political analysts say his third place in the polls probably underestimates his support in the countryside, as the indigenous population are under-sampled in opinion polls.

His born-again Christianity is a vote winner in impoverished rural districts where American evangelical churches are expanding fast among the Mayan population. Guatemala is at the forefront of the wave of Protestantism sweeping Latin America. A generation ago, a political revolution in the region was inspired by Catholic priests preaching liberation; today, the new missionaries counsel patience to their suffering flocks, promising justice in the hereafter.

Part of Rios Montt's success lies in presenting himself as the opponent of the powerful oligarchs who dominate one of the world's most unequal societies. Rios Montt claims he is the people's candidate standing against opponents backed by the country's economic elite. In reality, a network of patronage and corruption intertwines his party as closely with oligarchs as his opponents.

Other explanations for his popularity are darker. One of the after-effects of the war is a society plagued by endemic violence, ranging from the petty to organised political attacks blamed on a shadowy network with links to the army. Teenagers are shot for their mobile phones in broad daylight on the streets of Guatemala City, while in the countryside 13 candidates have been killed so far this year.

In this atmosphere of fear and confusion, Rios Montt has played the oldest trick in the dictators' handbook. Styling himself "the General", he has cultivated an image as the strongman who can deliver Guatemala from the disorder and unrest his party is creating. One aid worker likens it to Stockholm syndrome - the bond captives form with their abusers. "The country is becoming remilitarised," she says. "What can you expect in a country where violence has become part of the culture?"

To the alliance of human rights groups, unions and academics who recently organised a protest rally in the city, he is "General Genocide", Guatemala's Pinochet. Rigoberta Menchu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner warned last week that his very candidacy puts democracy itself at danger in the fragile central American country.