A U.S. Court, a Former Bolivian President and a Decade-Long Fight for Justice
A U.S. Court, a Former Bolivian President and a Decade-Long Fight for Justice
A Miami court decision on April 3 marked a step toward changing perceptions of the U.S. as a refuge for Latin America's rights abusers.
In a landmark human rights case, a U.S. federal jury found a former president of Bolivia responsible for ordering a violent crackdown that left 60 people dead in his country.
The civil suit was brought by eight Bolivian families whose relatives were killed when security forces violently repressed protests in 2003. They accused then-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and his defense minister, José Carlos Sánchez Berzain, with using force to intentionally kill and injure critics in an episode that became known as the Gas War.
Both men fled Bolivia, and have been living in the...
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