Bay Area Indymedia: San Francisc:
Friday, May 13, 2016.
On May 13,
2016, three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments
in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by School of the
Americas Watch members, Theresa Cameranesi and Judith Liteky. As plaintiffs,
they seek to compel the U.S. Department of Defense to disclose the names and
military units of foreign students and instructors attending the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), a U.S. military
training school located at Fort Benning, Georgia and funded by U.S. taxpayers.
In 2014,
Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton, of the United States Northern District Court of
California, ordered the Department of Defense to release the names of the
students and instructors at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas, or SOA), a U.S.
military training school for Latin American soldiers that for decades has been
connected to torturers, death squads and military dictators throughout the
Americas. SOA Watch activists had taken the U.S. government to court over its
refusal to release the information, and won. Read the court ruling here:
SOAW.org/judgment
The U.S.
Department of Defense subsequently filed a notice to appeal the court ruling.
SOA Watch is
an independent, grassroots movement that provides citizen oversight of U.S.
military training given to Latin American military and police personnel at the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the
School of Americas. Through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and nonviolent
protest, as well as media, legal and legislative work, the movement works in
solidarity with the people of Latin America and the Caribbean for human rights,
economic justice, and democracy.
The U.S.
Department of Defense has denied Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests by
School of the Americas Watch for the names of WHINSEC students and instructors
for the years 2004-2010. For the years 1946-2003 the names had always been
released when requested. The names are the basis of the SOA Watch database and
the means of citizen oversight of the record of SOA/WHINSEC graduates.
Plaintiff
Theresa Cameranesi is a member of the School of the Americas Watch Council. She
is also a member of the SOA Watch Legislative Working Group and is active in
advocating for Congressional investigation of the human rights records of
graduates of SOA and WHINSEC. As part of the SOA Watch San Francisco Research
Group, she and plaintiff Judith Liteky identified students and instructors at
WHINSEC who were admitted for training even though they had been charged with
human rights violations.
Plaintiff
Judith Liteky has been active with School of the Americas Watch since its
founding in 1990 in response to the massacre in San Salvador at the University
of Central America. On the night of November 16, 1989, a Salvadoran Army patrol
entered the University campus and massacred six Jesuit priests, their
housekeeper and her daughter. Nineteen of the military officers cited for this
atrocity had received training at the US Army School of the Americas at Fort
Benning, Georgia. Judith was a co-founder of School of the Americas Watch San
Francisco.
Plaintiff’s
Cameranesi and Liteky received the 2014 James Madison Freedom of Information
Citizen Award for pressing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the
Department of Defense to win a precedent-setting ruling that the government may
not withhold on national security grounds the names and military unit
information of graduates and instructors at the former School of the Americas,
now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
The SOA Watch
plaintiffs are being represented by attorneys Duffy Carolan and Kent Spriggs.
Duffy Carolan
is a partner with the San Francisco firm Jassy Vick Carolan. Attorney Carolan
has been honored by her peers as San Francisco's Lawyer of the Year in
Litigation - First Amendment cases. She has also received the James Madison
Freedom of Information Award, a Bay Area honor given to individuals and
organizations who have made significant contributions to the advancement of
freedom of expression, particularly freedom of information and open government.
Kent Spriggs
is the principal in Spriggs Law Firm, Tallahassee, Florida. Attorney Spriggs
has represented individuals in civil rights actions, the majority in class
actions. He also works in the field of international human rights, including
representing those illegally detained at Guantánamo Bay, and assisted in the
analysis of U.S. money used to destabilize sovereign Latin American
democracies. He has been a human rights observer in El Salvador, Honduras,
Colombia, and Chile as well as Palestine and Afghanistan.
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