International Law Archive

After six days of deliberation, a jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last week declared Bolivia’s former president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and defense minister, Carlos Sanchez Berzain, guilty under U.S. law of extrajudicial killings committed in Bolivia 15 years ago. Damages of $10 million were awarded to the case’s eight plaintiffs, who all lost family members during the 2003 security crackdown on protests in Bolivia over a proposed natural gas pipeline running to Chile. Both Sanchez de Lozada and Sanchez Berzain have been living in exile in the United States since they fled Bolivia after the violence in what became […]

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Celeste Hicks’ book “The Trial of Hissene Habre: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice,” which was published by Zed Books this month. In July 2015, the unthinkable happened. After having spent more than 20 years living in comfortable exile in a plush suburb of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, Chad’s former president, Hissene Habre, was brought before the Extraordinary African Chambers, or EAC, a special court set up within the Senegalese judiciary. The beginning of his trial came two years after he was arrested in Dakar and charged with war crimes, […]