(CNN) -- Guatemalan officials backtracked Thursday on plans to extradite the country's former interior minister from Spain, saying justice would be better served if he is tried in Spain.
Former Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann faces 10 murder charges stemming from incidents at two prisons in Guatemala. A Spanish court approved his extradition in May.
But on Thursday, Guatemalan Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz told CNN that the country planned to end its extradition request because of "a lack of guarantees in the process."
Paz y Paz said officials have made a request with Guatemala's Supreme Court, which has the final say, requesting that Vielmann be tried in Spain.
Diego Alvarez, a spokesman for the United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, said the commission supported the Guatemalan government's decision.
Notable delays in sending extradition paperwork from Guatemala to Spain showed that there was not an objective environment to hear the case in Guatemala, he said.
Vielmann faces charges in both Spain and Guatemala stemming from the same incident, a 2006 uprising at the El Pavon prison in Guatemala where seven inmates were killed.
The Interior Ministry and police said at the time that the prisoners were killed during a violent confrontation with prison authorities. However, a report by the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman's Office concluded the prisoners had been executed.
Vielmann is wanted in Guatemala in connection with the seven killings. He also has been accused of ordering the killings of three inmates who escaped from El Infiernito prison in 2005.
In an interview with CNN en Espaņol in December, Vielmann said that the seven prisoners were killed in a confrontation.
"I have never broken the law," he said, adding that his opponents were taking the incident at El Pavon out of context.
A Spanish judge charged Vielmann with crimes against humanity and seven murders in December, but released him on 100,000 euro bail ($132,000), ordering that he turn in his passports and report weekly to authorities.
Last year, the head of the impunity commission, which spearheaded the charges, publicly shared photographs that he said could be evidence that Vielmann was at the site of the killings and had ordered them.
Vielmann called the pictures released by the U.N.-backed commission "a game of photos."
The former interior minister said he simply wants to appear before a court where there is a presumption of innocence. He also said he wants the evidence heard in court, not in public through the media.
CNN's Al Goodman contributed to this report.
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