Subject: Media Release: Activist Who Sue Obama Administration Over Pentagon Secrecy
From: "Hendrik Voss, SOA Watch" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2016 17:31:56 -0400

For immediate release
May 13, 2016

Contact: Michael Bass, SOA Watch San Francisco 
510-654-5355 or 510-432-2555, [email-masked]
Hendrik Voss, 202-425-5128, [email-masked]

SOA Watch Activists Sue Obama Administration Over Pentagon Secrecy 
FOIA Denial About Graduates of U.S. Military Training School Challenged in Federal Court

San Francisco - On May 13, 2016, three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard 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.

"The case is important for SOA Watch because our roots are the matching of the names of the perpetrators of the UCA massacre of 16-year old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989, with the names of SOA graduates." said SOA Watch activist and plaintiff Judy Liteky after the hearing. "Today's case is also important as a means of defending citizen oversight of US government policy and action. A judgement for releasing the names of WHINSEC students will demonstrate that the Freedom of Information Act is a tool to use in the struggle for government transparency."

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: http://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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