A Tribute to Justice: Honoring Forty Years of Struggle to Advance Judicial Process for Crimes Against Humanity in Chile

Abstract

1 These remarks were delivered as part of A Tribute to Justice, an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the military coup d’etat in Chile, presented by the Charles Horman Truth Foundation at the Third Church of Christ Scientist in New York City on September 9, 2013. Other speakers and honorees included Peter Weiss, Judge Juan Guzman Tapia, Jennifer Harbury, Reed Brody, Peter Kornbluh, and Prof. Cynthia Soohoo. The program was co-sponsored by CUNY School of Law, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the North American Congress on Latin America, with support from the Ford Foundation. The editors thank Joyce Horman for permission to transcribe the program, and gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Bridget Lombardozzi and Southern District Court Reporters, P.C. The remarks have been edited for length and grammatical continuity. Videos of the entire Tribute to Justice program can be accessed at http:// www.hormantruth.org/ht/2013videos. 2 Almudena Bernabeu has served as International Attorney for the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) since early 2002. Bernabeu leads CJA’s Latin America program, practicing U.S.-based civil Alien Tort Statute litigation against human rights abusers and universal jurisdiction criminal human rights prosecutions before the Spanish National Court. Bernabeu is also Director of CJA’s Transitional Justice Program. Bernabeu currently serves as the lead private prosecutor on two human rights cases before the Spanish National Court: one filed on behalf of survivors of the Guatemalan Genocide and the other brought against senior Salvadoran officials for the massacre of Jesuit priests in 1989. Bernabeu has worked in human rights and international law for the past decade. She has published many articles on human rights litigation in national courts and its effectiveness in the struggle against impunity, as well as on reforming Spanish asylum and refugee law. She has lectured at universities in multiple countries, participated in numerous conferences internationally, and has conducted trainings for lawyers and government prosecutors. Bernabeu is also Vice President of the Spanish Association for Human Rights (www.apdhe.org), and serves as an advisor at the Human Rights Clinic at Santa Clara University. Bernabeu is a member of the advisory board of the Peruvian Institute of Forensic Anthropology (EPAF) (www.epafperu.org), a forensic group providing evidence on human rights violations investigations and prosecutions. In 2012, Bernabeu won the prestigious Katharine & George Alexander Law Prize, and the Yo Dona Magazine Award. She was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2013, and just received the SCEVOLA award for ethics and professional excellence. Ms. Bernabeu holds an LLM degree from the University Of Valencia School Of Law, where she specialized in Public International Law. Trained in Spanish and U.S. law, she is a member of the Valencia and Madrid Bar Associations and the American Bar Association.