Guatemala's highest court on Tuesday ordered that the genocide trial against one of the Central American country's former dictators be taken over by a judge who wants the proceedings to go back to square one.

A spokesman for the Constitutional Court, Martin Guzman, said the case of Efrain Rios Montt now goes back to Judge Carol Patricia Flores, who last week ordered that the proceedings start over at a point before the retired general was charged with genocide.

Rios Montt, 86, is accused of responsibility for the deaths of 1,771 Mayan Indians killed during military offensives by the dictatorship that he headed from March 1982 to August 1983. The operations, during a U.S.-backed war against leftist guerrillas, were part of a "scorched earth" campaign aimed at wiping out support for the rebels.

The trial against Rios Montt and Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, 68, a former high-ranking member of the military chiefs of staff, had been nearing closing arguments last week when Flores intervened.

Flores had handled the case in its pre-trial stage, but was taken off the case in February 2012 by an appeals court after the defense filed a complaint saying she was biased against the defendants. She was reinstated last week by the Constitutional Court, then ruled that all actions taken in the case since she was first asked to step down in November 2011 were null.

Neither Rios Montt's lawyers nor attorneys for the plaintiffs returned calls from The Associated Press seeking comment on Tuesday's action.

Many speculated that Flores' ruling was politically motivated in the much-disputed trial, which is the first genocide case against a former president in Latin America. In weeks of testimony from dozens of victims, soldiers and experts, even current President Otto Perez Molina had been implicated in the massacres.