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The Recorder
08-19-2002

LEGAL TEAM FIGHTS BACK FOR VICTIMS OF TORTURE

In October 1973 a military unit known as the "Caravan of Death" executed 13 people in the Chilean town of Copiapo.

The victims had been rounded up following the overthrow of President Salvador Allende, and relatives of one of the victims are now seeking justice in U.S. courts. Suit was filed three years ago against a reputed member of the death squad, former Chilean General Armando Fernandez Larios, who is living in the United States.

The case, set to go to trial in May 2003, is one of several suits initiated by the Center for Justice and Accountability, a San Francisco human rights group that helps survivors of torture sue their abusers.

The group won a major victory last month when a Florida jury found three Salvadoran generals liable for torture and ordered them to pay $54.6 million in damages.

Going after perpetrators in the United States is an important field of law that "has taken off since the arrest of [Chilean General Augusto] Pinochet in 1998," said Sandra Coliver, director of the center.

In fact, the Pinochet case inspired Gerald Gray to found the center in 1998. He had already set up an organization to provide counseling and social services to survivors of torture, and saw a need to give them legal options as well.

In addition to the El Salvador and Chile cases, the center last month filed a similar suit against a high-ranking Honduran military officer living in Florida. And it plans to file suit against commanders in Africa for crimes committed against humanity in the 1980s.

The center, which consists of three attorneys and two support staff, is backed with pro bono assistance from big guns in the legal community. Morrison & Foerster attorneys litigated the Salvadoran case, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is representing the Chilean plaintiffs, and a partner in Covington & Burling's San Francisco office has signed on to represent the African plaintiffs.

Attorneys have sued under two federal statutes -- the 213-year-old Alien Tort Claims Act and the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act. Both laws allow victims of torture or their families to sue for crimes committed outside the United States.

Wilson associate Nicole Healy, one of the attorneys in the Chilean case, said the legal team won an important ruling that helped set case law in the field.

Claiming that the statute of limitations had expired, General Larios had asked the court to dismiss the suit. But the Wilson team successfully argued that the statute of limitations did not go into effect until a victim's body was discovered.

The skeleton of victim Winston Cabello was found in 1990 during an exhumation authorized by the Chilean government.

"It was the first time the family knew what happened," Healy said.

Coliver, who has spent her career as a human rights lawyer, said she was inspired by her mother who fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and served as an interpreter at the Nuremberg trials.

"Her stories about the Nuremberg trials had a big impact on me as I was growing up," Coliver said. "Those stories nurtured a sense of outrage at injustice and the conviction that the law could provide a measure of relief."

-- Brenda Sandburg