Court Reversal Upholds Civil Suit in Human Rights Case Against Salvadoran Generals

Interview with Moira Feeney, attorney with the Center for Justice and Accountability, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

On Jan. 6, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, reversed its earlier ruling on a seminal human rights case. The court had originally sided with the defendants, Generals Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who had both served as defense minister in El Salvador during the 1980s. The men served in governments which tortured its citizens with impunity during the civil war in which 70,000 Salvadorans died, mostly at the hands of the military and its allied death squads.

After three torture survivors won an initial court victory suing the men for their grave human rights abuses, the U.S. appeals court ruled last February that the statute of limitations had expired for bringing suit against the generals, who moved to the U.S. in 1989. But in its new decision, the court ruled that the clock on the 10-year statute of limitations didn't begin ticking until 1992, after a peace agreement ended the war in El Salvador. So the ruling reinstated the finding for the plaintiffs Neris Gonzalez, Juan Romagoza and Carlos Mauricio, who are now eligible to collect damages.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Moira Feeney, a lawyer with the Center for Justice and Accountability in San Francisco, the group which brought the law suit. She explains the mission of the Center, founded in 1998, and summarizes the case against the Salvadoran generals.

For information on this and other human rights lawsuits the group is pursuing, call the Center for Justice and Accountability at (415) 544-0444 or visit their website at www.cja.org

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