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Testifying in a civil suit brought by three Salvadorans who accuse their country’s military of torturing them two decades ago, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador said Tuesday that the failure of military leaders to rein in murderous troops had been the biggest obstacle to democracy.

The trial of two retired Salvadoran generals in a two-decade-old torture case opened here today with a witness singling out one of them as a participant in a brutal 24-day interrogation.

“A federal judge in Atlanta awarded $140 million in damages Monday to four men found to have been tortured and abused by a Bosnian Serb soldier as part of an “ethnic cleansing” campaign in the early 1990s.”

In a Washington D.C. courtroom on September 10, 2001, US Magistrate Judge Alan Kay brought down a judgment for compensatory and punitive damages of more than $66 million against the defendant in the case of Jane Doe et al versus Johny Lumintang.

The Center for Justice and Accountability announced Saturday it had filed a federal lawsuit against Liu Qi, the mayor of Beijing and president of the Beijing Olympic Committee.

A lawsuit filed in the United States against visiting Beijing mayor Liu Qi is a sign to Falungong practitioners in China that the world has not forgotten their plight, a lawyer involved in the case said.

Liu Qi, Mayor of Beijing and President of the Beijing Olympic Committee, was served with a law suit filed in U.S. District Court for his responsibility in overseeing severe human rights abuses against Chinese and international Falun Gong practitioners.

In a strong statement on the seriousness of crimes committed against ordinary East Timorese, Judge Alan Kay ruled in early September to hold Indonesian General Johny Lumintang accountable for $66 million in damages for his role in systematic human rights violations following East Timor’s vote for independence in 1999.