CJA In The News

An immigration judge has found that a former defense minister in El Salvador, a close ally of the United States during a civil war there in the 1980s, should be deported because of his involvement in a number of human rights violations, including the assassination of an archbishop and the massacre of more than 1,000 peasants.

Executive Director Pamela Merchant discusses the Center for Justice & Accountability’s work with Joshua Johnson of KQED.

The United Nations Human Rights Council voted to open an international investigation into possible war crimes by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels in the final stages of a 26-year civil war that ended in 2009. This investigation is an important step towards breaking the cycle of impunity that fuels ongoing and serious human rights violations in Sri Lanka today. Read more here.

After seven years, the American Psychological Association recently decided to close an ethics case against a Guantanamo psychologist without taking disciplinary action. This is not merely an isolated story about a single individual’s reprieve from accountability.

A report by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, endorsed by CJA, finds credible allegations of post-war international crimes by government forces against Tamils in Sri Lanka’s north, nearly five years after the end of a three-decade civil war. These findings challenge the Sri Lankan government’s claims of post-war progress and underscore the urgent need to fight impunity with accountability. Click here to read the report; CJA’s foreword starts on page vi.

A new report by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, endorsed by CJA, finds credible allegations of post-war international crimes by government forces against Tamils in Sri Lanka’s north, nearly five years after the end of a three-decade civil war

A federal judge in California on Monday revoked the U.S. citizenship of a former Guatemalan special forces officer and sentenced him to a maximum 10-year prison term for deceiving U.S. immigration officials and covering up his role in a 1982 massacre of 250 villagers in Guatemala, one of the worst atrocities in modern times in Latin America.

The U.S. has defended a judge’s decision ordering General Vides-Casanova’s removal from the U.S. for his role in widespread human rights abuses in El Salvador in the 1980s, including the torture of CJA’s clients and the murder of four American churchwomen. Click here for the press release, here to read the full immigration court decision or here to read a summary of the oral arguments of the appeal hearing.

Vides Casanova, who was El Salvador’s defense minister, has been living in Florida since immigrating in 1989. In 2012, an immigration judge ruled that he could be deported for his role in multiple acts of killings and torture committed by the Salvadoran military, including the slayings of three American nuns and a lay churchwoman in 1980.

They say as many as 200,000 men, women and children were executed and buried in mass graves in 1980s Somaliland. They accuse Somalia’s late dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, of atrocities and want to put his alleged henchmen on trial.