CJA

The passing of Ieng Sary and the dismissal of Ieng Thirith for mental unfitness—and the advanced age and poor health of the remaining two Khmer Rouge defendants (Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan)—make imperative the need for an efficient and exhaustive decision on the liability of Khmer Rouge era atrocities.

General Ríos Montt’s congressional term ended in January 2012. Two weeks later, he was indicted for genocide in his home country. Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war was one of the bloodiest and most vicious of modern times, pitting state security forces and their allies against leftist rebels. By the war’s end in 1996, and in a country one-fourth the size of California, more than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared.

More than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared in Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war. It was one of the bloodiest and most vicious of modern times. But one period was especially brutal, the one in which General Efraín Rios Montt was in charge.

A judge had just ruled that the military dictator, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, now 86, should stand trial for genocide and crimes against humanity committed under his rule in the 1980s, a decision Mr. Utuy and other Maya survivors of Guatemala’s 34-year civil war had gathered in the courtroom to hear in person.

March 19, sees the scheduled start date for the oral phase of the trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Rios Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez. They are accused of being the intellectual authors of the assassination of 1,771 indigenous Mayans of Ixil ethnicity in the Quiche Department, the forced displacement of 29,000, and sexual violations and torture, in massacres and violations perpetrated by the Guatemalan military during Rios Montt’s 17-month rule between 1982 and 1983.

Co-founder of the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Sary, died before a verdict was reached in the trial against him and two other senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). His death at the age of 87 serves as a wake-up call to the UN backed Tribunal, which has been riddled with delays since its inception.

Bay Area survivors of Cambodia’s genocide are dismayed with Thursday’s death of a Khmer Rouge leader before he could face justice at the hands of an international tribunal for his role in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s.

CJA Legal Director Kathy Roberts discusses the Yousuf v. Samantar case.

For the first time in history a former head of state, Guatemala’s Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, is on trial for genocide in the country where the crime occurred. Two hundred thousand died over 36 years of armed conflict in the Central American nation, mostly Maya indigenous noncombatants at government hands. The unfolding judicial process has global repercussions, strengthening possibilities for prosecution of other prominent human rights cases.

A former El Salvador defense minister admitted responsibility for military abuses against civilians during his country’s civil war on Wednesday, saying he could not stop human rights violations because of divisions within the armed forces.