Human Rights Brief
A Legal Resource for the International Human Rights Community
Volume 9 Issue 3
Bámaca Velásquez V. Guatemala: An Expansion
of the Inter-American System's Jurisprudence on Reparations
by Megan Hagler and Francisco Rivera*
On November 28 and 29, 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) held hearings for the reparations phase of Bámaca Velásquez v. Guatemala, a landmark case that expanded the scope of reparations for cases of forced disappearance in the inter-American system. At the reparations hearing, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Commission) requested that the Court order the exhumation and return of the disappeared body as a specific remedy. In its judgment on reparations, released on February 22, 2002, the Court granted the Commission's request and ordered the Guatemalan government to exhume the body and return it to the victim's family. Because the Court has never before ordered the exhumation of a body in a case of forced disappearance, the Court's ruling on reparations in the Bámaca case is a significant development in forced disappearance jurisprudence in the inter-American system.
History of the Case
On March 12, 1992, the Guatemalan army captured Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan comandante of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), during Guatemala's civil war. The army secretly detained and tortured Bámaca for over a year before killing him in September 1993. According to an eyewitness, Bámaca was last seen "lying half-naked on a bed, with his eyes bandaged and an arm and leg bandaged" and with his face swollen. His body has never been found. For the last ten years, Jennifer Harbury, Bámaca's wife, has been searching for truth, justice, and her husband's body.
Hoping to find her husband alive, Harbury filed petitions for habeas corpus, pursued several criminal lawsuits, and carried out a series of hunger strikes in front of Guatemalan military headquarters and in front of the United States White House. At that time Harbury did not know that Bámaca was already dead. In 1995, three years after Bámaca's disappearance, U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli disclosed that Bámaca was assassinated in 1993 upon orders of Guatemalan Colonel Julio Roberto Alpírez, a former paid CIA informant and a graduate of the School of Americas, a U.S. Army training center based in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Since 1995, Harbury has focused her efforts on obtaining her husband's remains. To this end, Harbury participated in various exhumations in attempting to identify her husband's remains. These exhumations were unsuccessful due to a number of obstructions by Guatemalan agents. Although it was fully aware that the bodies exhumed belonged to people other than Bámaca, the government of Guatemala carried out the exhumations under the pretext that the exhumed bodies at least matched Bámaca's characteristics. None of the bodies exhumed so far resembles the physical characteristics of Bámaca or appears to have died of the same causes.
In 1995, CIA documents provided information indicating that Bámaca's remains were buried in a Guatemalan military base called Las Cabañas. To this day, no exhumation has been conducted at Las Cabañas base, and Guatemalan authorities have stated that they would "continue to obstruct any exhumation procedure in Las Cabañas until they receive an amnesty."
Despite official stonewalling, Harbury has continued with her quest for justice simultaneously on three fronts. First, the Guatemalan government has denied Harbury justice despite her continuous demands for a full investigation and the return of her husband's body. Second, in the United States, Harbury filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the CIA, which is allegedly withholding vital information regarding her husband's case. Harbury also filed a Bivens action, a case for damages against a federal agent who violates the U.S. Constitution while acting under color of law. In this case, which Harbury argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, she claimed that CIA officials participated in torturing and murdering her husband, and that while he was being tortured, and for more than a year and a half after his death, U.S. State Department and National Security Council officials systematically concealed information from her and misled her about her husband's fate. Finally, Harbury has sought justice through the inter-American human rights system.
More:
http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/09/3bamaca.cfm
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Jennifer Harbury
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Published on Monday, March 18, 2002 in the Washington Post
Slain Rebel's Wife to Plead Case Before High Court
by Charles Lane
A political and legal drama that began 10 years ago in a remote corner of Guatemala reaches the Supreme Court today, where a lawyer-activist will argue for the right to sue former senior U.S. officials for allegedly covering up the murder of her husband, a Guatemalan rebel leader who died in Guatemalan army custody.
Jennifer K. Harbury says her constitutional right of access to the courts was violated by then-Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher, then-national security adviser Anthony Lake, and five other White House and State Department officials who, she says, falsely assured her in 1993 and 1994 that they were looking into Efrain Bamaca Velasquez's fate.
"But for those deceptive statements," Harbury said in an interview, "I could have gone to court and saved his life."
Although its origins lie in a bygone chapter of U.S. foreign policy, and the ultimate result is likely to turn on how broadly the justices define the right of access to the courts, the Harbury case is attracting attention as a conflict between citizens' right to know what their government is doing – and the government's need to operate in secrecy under some circumstances.
It arises at a time when the United States and its allies are conducting secret intelligence, law enforcement and military operations against terrorists around the world – amid criticism from civil libertarians that secrecy could prevent accountability for violations of human rights.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0318-05.htm
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