(BBC NEWS) Guatemala City – Pedro Pimentel Rios, 55, was extradited from the US last year.
He is the fifth former soldier to be convicted for the killings in the village of Dos Erres in 1982.
The sentence is largely symbolic as the maximum actual term is 50 years but it comes amid renewed moves to try those implicated in civil war atrocities.
The massacre at Dos Erres was one of the most violent episodes in Guatemala’s brutal 36-year civil conflict.