WASHINGTON — Óscar Mejía Victores, a Guatemalan brigadier general who presided over some of the bloodiest years of his country’s civil war before seizing power in a 1983 coup and ultimately returning the country to democratic rule, died Feb. 1. He was 85.

In 2011, Mr. Mejía Victores was prosecuted in Guatemala on charges of crimes against humanity for the killings of thousands of indigenous Guatemalans by soldiers under his command. He was ruled unfit to stand trial because of a stroke.

The general was one in a long line of Guatemalan military dictators. A 1954 coup, funded and organized partially by the United States, plunged the country into turmoil.

From 1960 to 1996, more than 200,000 civilians were killed during a civil war between government forces and leftist guerillas, according to a UN human rights report.

More than 80 percent of the victims were Mayan Indians, who make up about half of Guatemala’s population.

Nearly half of the human rights violations occurred in 1982, when Brigadier General Efraín Ríos Montt seized power and installed Mr. Mejía Victores as his defense minister.

Seventeen months later, Mr. Mejía Victores came to power on his own.

In what was ‘‘more a palace revolt than a government upheaval,’’ as one anonymous Western diplomat told The New York Times, Mr. Mejía Victores ousted Ríos Montt amid discontent in the military over the president’s assertive leadership style and outspoken brand of evangelical Christianity.

In that regard, the portly general was little different from his predecessor, who was known to critics as the ‘‘born-again butcher’’ for the remorseless killing of civilians and political targets.

Under Mr. Mejía Victores, political killings continued at a rate of 90 to 100 per month, according to a Times account in 1984.

The government, under pressure from the United States and other nations, did move to reform the political system, in large part to reopen the spigot of foreign aid that had been reduced to a trickle by Congress because of human rights concerns.

The money began pouring in after Mr. Mejía Victores announced elections for the framing of a new constitution and for the presidency.

The 1984 election of a constituent assembly was said to be the country’s first fraud-free vote since 1950.

The new constitution, which remains in place, was drafted a year later. Vinicio Cerezo, a civilian promising reform, was elected president that fall.

Despite high expectations, the five years that Cerezo spent in office were largely viewed as a failure.

They were marked by an uptick in human rights abuses after two unsuccessful coup attempts and by continued economic recession.