California IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : Guatemalan Widow Eligible for Asylum

A Guatemalan woman who received death threats after her common-law husband, a guerrilla in Guatemala City, was tortured and murdered was ruled eligible for political asylum by a federal appeals court. After the killing in 1979, Sandra Gonzalez-Garcia said she received eight or nine threatening letters signed by the Guatemalan Work Party, to which her husband, Raoul Velazquez, had belonged. Gonzalez-Garcia then left Guatemala City and, in June, 1986, entered the United States and was arrested as an illegal alien. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 that she had shown that her fear of persecution was reasonable.