"The genocidal master plan came earlier and Ríos Montt supplied the tactics"
"The genocidal master plan came earlier and Ríos Montt supplied the tactics"
Human rights lawyer Almudena Bernabéu has been involved in some key cases in Latin America
Joseba Elola 4 SEP 2013 - 15:57 CET
Almudena Bernabéu first visited Guatemala in June 2006. Then 34 years old, the Valencia-born lawyer had gone there to help prepare the case against the Central American country's former president, General José Efraín Ríos Montt, accused of overseeing a campaign of genocide against the indigenous Mayan population in the early 1980s.
Bernabéu, who has divided her time between Madrid and San Francisco since 1999 (she works at the Center for Justice and Accountability), had already been working on the case for two years after the Spanish High Court, which practices universal jurisdiction, and has pursued other notable human international rights cases, had taken it up.
On May 10, Ríos Montt became the first former Latin American head of state to be convicted of genocide and war crimes, and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. But less than two weeks later, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court overturned the ruling, ordering a new trial of the 86-year-old former dictator.
Bernabéu also worked on the case that proved the involvement of a former Salvadoran defense minister in the killing of six priests in 1989.
She is now working with the widow of Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara, who was murdered during the first days of the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, in September 1973. Joan Jara first requested an investigation into her husband's death in 1999. Late last year, Chilean Judge Juan Fuentes charged retired Colonel Mario Manríquez as the man who ordered the killing.
More:
http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/09/04/inenglish/1378302416_531650.html
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