A court of appeals in Guatemala has released three military personnel from prosecution in the theft of 74 rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition from the Air Command in Petén. With the judges' decision, only one of the defendants will now go to trial over the stolen weapons. Prosecutors had pursued a hypothesis that the missing rifles were handed to organized crime, an idea that gave the theft a darker cast from the start. Investigators faced an uncomfortable question: how did such a quantity of weaponry disappear from an active military installation in the north? The three men spared a trial will not have to answer the charge in court, while the remaining defendant carries the case alone. Given the possibility that combat rifles reached criminal groups, the outcome will likely be picked apart in Guatemalan media for some time.