Salvadoran torture survivor finds closure in American court

[struggle4progress]

By Juliana Barbassa
ASSOCIATED PRESS

9:15 a.m. February 25, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO – ... It was 1983, and El Salvador was in the midst of a 12-year civil war that claimed some 75,000 lives. <Carlos> Mauricio, an agronomy professor at the University of El Salvador, had been kidnapped from his classroom by men with guns ...

... Mauricio and two other former Salvadoran political prisoners sued the military commanders who once ran the tiny Central American country in the U.S. courts.

Along with lay church worker Neris Gonzalez and Juan Romagoza Arce, a doctor who volunteered his time helping the poor, Mauricio won a $54.6 million jury award that was recently upheld on appeal.

The three plaintiffs have recovered just $300,000 so far, and they donated most of that to human rights causes. But the money made it one of the first cases in which torture survivors were able to make those responsible pay for their actions ...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070225-0915-torturetort.html

[rpannier]

1. Thank you for the post

It's nice to read real news.

I'm glad they are receiving some sort of justice.
But, I doubt that it really makes up for the hell they went through.