CJA

Join Us at CJA's 2010 Annual Event

Wed, 28 Apr 2010

Join us on Wednesday, April 28, 2010 for our annual event – Celebrating our Victories in the Movement for Global Justice – at the City Club of San Francisco.

Highlights include:
• Keynote Speaker: Alberto Mora, former General Counsel of the U.S. Navy and outspoken critic of harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo;
• 2010 Judith Lee Stronach Human Rights Award Award Honoree: Myrna Mack Foundation of Guatemala

Alberto J. Mora

2010 Annual Event Keynote Speaker Alberto J. Mora is a former General Counsel of the United States Navy. He led an effort within the Defense Department to oppose the legal theories of John Yoo and David Addington, and to try to end coercive interrogation tactics at Guantanamo Bay.

Helen Mack Chang of The Myrna Mack Foundation

2010 Judith Lee Stronach Human Rights Award Honoree Helen Mack Chang founded the Myrna Mack Foundation in 1993. A Guatemalan businesswoman and human rights activist, she became an outspoken advocate for human fights after her sister, anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang, was assassinated by the Guatemalan military on September 11, 1990.

A California Reckoning in a Case of Abuses Abroad

Sat, 30 Jan 2010

The three refugees from Somalia came to the Bay Area several years ago to escape the violence of their homeland, to put the terror behind them. But they were shocked to learn in 2002...

Members of Congress, Retired Military Officials, Career Foreign Service Diplomats, Holocaust Survivors and Others File Amici Curiae Briefs with Supreme Court in Support of Respondents in Samantar v. Yousuf

Thu, 28 Jan 2010

Supporters of Somali Torture Survivors File Amici Curiae Briefs with the Supreme Court in Samantar v. Yousuf

Thu, 28 Jan 2010

Members of Congress, retired military officials, career foreign service diplomats, Holocaust Survivors and others file amicus briefs in a landmark case against former Somali Defense Minister Mohammed Ali Samantar.

CJA Files Respondents' Brief with U.S. Supreme Court in Samantar v. Yousuf

Wed, 20 Jan 2010

"The Invisible Country," by Tristan McConnell and Narayan Mahon, Virginia Quarterly Review 15 January 2010

A moving reportage on the legacy of Barre-era war crimes in Somaliland: “The President told us there was a war,” Abokor said, “that the cities we had known were now cities of ghosts, that our people were refugees. He told us it was our fault.”

CJA Files Respondents' Brief with U.S. Supreme Court in Samantar v. Yousuf

Wed, 20 Jan 2010

Court to decide if former foreign government officials who use torture, rape and killing as tools of repression are above the law, or whether those who avail themselves of all the benefits of living in the U.S. must, like all other Americans, submit themselves to U.S. law.

To learn more, read CJA Executive Director Pamela Merchant's article in the Huffington Post: Is There a War Criminal Living in Your Backyard?

Stand With Haiti

In the past, CJA has relied on your generous support in bringing justice to Haitian survivors of torture and other man-made disasters. Now, we invite you once again to support the people of Haiti in the worst natural disaster in this troubled nation's two hundred year history.

Army Records Spur Hopes For Justice

Fri, 11 Dec 2009

Original Guatemalan army records on a scorched-earth campaign known as "Operation Sofia," presented as evidence in a human rights case in Spain, have bolstered hopes for justice among the relatives of victims of Guatemala's 36-year civil war in which more than 200,000 people were killed.

Mexican Government Accountable for Violence Against Women in Ciudad Juárez Case

Thu, 10 Dec 2009

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an opinion today finding Mexico in violation of human rights conventions under the American Convention of Human Rights and the Convention Belém do Pará in the case of Campo Algodonero v. The United Mexican States. On July 7, 2009, CJA joined several humans rights and women’s rights organizations, law school clinics and law professors as an amicus, urging the Court to find Mexico at fault for failing to fulfill its human rights obligations.

CJA 2009 Highlights

Yousuf v. Samantar Goes Before the Supreme Court

On September 30, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear the first human rights case to address atrocities in Somalia under the brutal Siad Barre regime. The key issue under review is whether the defendant, Virginia resident and former Somali Defense Minister, General Mohamed Ali Samantar, is immune from civil suit in the U.S. for abuses committed in Somalia. No person has ever been held legally responsible for the abuses committed by the military government against the civilian population of Somalia in the 1980s.

Expert Witnesses Testify in the Guatemala Genocide Case

Thu, 03 Dec 2009

Judge Santiago Pedraz heard extraordinary testimony from Fredy Peccerelli, Director of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), on hundreds of exhumations conducted across Guatemala to unearth the remains of civilian victims killed in Guatemala during the 1980s. Peccerelli, who was brought into the case as an expert witness by CJA and the Spanish Association for Human Rights (APDHE), presented the Judge with a 900-page report analyzing 363 exhumations conducted by FAFG of victims killed between 1978 and 1984 in five municipalities in Guatemala. Peccerelli’s testimony supported the accounts of dozens of witnesses and survivors who have previously testified.