12 11 12 Print » The human rights detectiv e » Print - Salon com http www salon com 2012 05 11 the_human_rights_detective FRIDAY MAY 11 2012 11 00 PM UTC The human rights detective How Kate Doy le pursues war crim inals in Latin Am erica B Y JE FFE RS O N M O RL E Y Kate Doy le’s job isn’t ex actly journalism though she’s nailed more big stories than many Pulitzer Prize winners Her work does not quite qualify as law enforcement either though a few bad guy s liv ing in confined quarters rue the day she came into their liv es “Human rights detectiv e” sounds flippant so she prefers “forensic archiv ist ” Whatev er y ou call it war criminals hav e to pay attention Last month Doy le a senior analy st at the non-profit National Security Archiv e testified as an ex pert witness in the Peruv ian Kate Doyle human rights investigator combines legal activism w ith forensic science Credit gov ernment’s prosecution of Reuters Jorge Lopez V ladimir Montesinos the country ’s former intelligence chief who is on trial for ordering the ex ecution of 1 4 captured leftist guerrillas in 1 997 Doy le authenticated a declassified CIA cable she had obtained that included a first person account of Montesinos’s actions In the near future she hopes to take the stand as an ex pert witness against former de facto Guatemalan president Efrain Rios Montt who presided ov er a genocidal “scorched earth” war that killed an estimated 200 000 people in the early 1 980s the worst genocide in the Western Hemisphere in the 20 t h century An inv estigation documented 626 different massacres committed by the U S -backed military forces between 1 97 9 and 1 984 most of the v ictims were unarmed May an Indians Doy le’s forensic inv estigations ov er the last 20 y ears hav e made her an irritant to gov ernments ev ery where — including Washington — as well a friend to the families of the v ictims of human rights abuses throughout Latin America She has won a host of awards including this y ear’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archiv e and Puffin Foundation award for human rights activ ism one of the world’s largest prizes in the field She will share the award with fellow inv estigator Fredy Peccerelli who is the ex ecutiv e director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation “She speaks with such strength because she speaks as an American ” Peccerelli said in an interv iew “V ery few times do y ou hav e someone inv estigating their own gov ernment and pointing to their own officials about their inv olv ement Kate speaks about the responsibility that Americans bear because of what they did It’s v ery www salon com 2012 05 11 the_human_rights_detectiv e print 1 3 Print » The human rights detectiv e » Print - Salon com powerful ” Full disclosure Doy le is a friend I relied on CIA documents she obtained from the National Security Archiv e to write my book Our Man in Mex ico Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA Like many journalists in Washington and Latin America I hav e found her work to be built on a solid foundation of official documentation from the U S and other gov ernments She’s also a passionate adv ocate of freedom of information laws Thanks in part to her work sev en Latin American countries hav e adopted freedom of information laws since 2000 The most distinctiv e feature of these laws is that unlike the U S Freedom of Information Act they ex plicitly forbid the withholding of information about human rights abuses on grounds of “national security ” A prov ision she calls “v ery important but untested ” “Hav ing a legal mechanism to obligate the state to prov ide information is just the beginning ” say s Doy le She shares the information with prosecutors to dev elop cases based on “criminal patterns of action” that y ield specific details of a disappearance or a massacre Peccerelli’s forensic anthropologists ex hume bodies and do DNA analy sis Doy le has been largely frustrated in Mex ico and El Salv ador where legal authorities are reluctant to confront the abuses of the past But in Guatemala she and her colleagues hav e uncov ered some remarkable stories that hav e led to the prosecution of military officers inv olv ed in war crimes In the late 1 990s a source gav e Guatemalan human rights activ ists a 54-page army log that rev ealed the fate of scores of people who were “disappeared” by security forces during the mid-1 980s The log included photos of 1 83 of the v ictims along with coded references to their ex ecutions For the families of the v ictims the results of the discov ery of the so-called “death squad dossier” were close to miraculous Not only are the officers named in the documents now under inv estigation but thanks to Peccerelli’s DNA work the bodies of fiv e of the v ictims were identified and returned to their families who had nev er known what had happened to their lov ed ones 30 y ears ago In 2009 another source gav e Doy le a set of internal military documents about the scorched earth campaign of the early 1 980s that were so damning in their details that the source recommended she immediately leav e the country “This person was worried that any body who had possession of such incendiary documents would be targeted ” Doy le said The documents will be used by prosecutors in the trial of Rios Montt “We hav e a v ery strong case ” Doy le say s But the continuing power of the Guatemalan military means the 86-y ear-old retired general may be able to av oid justice I asked her if she ev er get discouraged by the enormity of the crimes she inv estigates “I don’t ” she replied “I”v e met so many beautiful dedicated people in Guatemala who hav e been working on this for 30 y ears that I feel priv ileged What Fredy ’s group has done with DNA findings is amazing I’m inspired not discouraged ” Working with the families of people who hav e lost lov ed ones she say s “is alway s painful But I can bring them information that they ’v e nev er been able to get That’s mitigates the pain ” I asked her if she ev er gets scared “I hav e receiv ed threats ” she say s with a rueful laugh “But I’v e nev er felt one iota as frightened as my www salon com 2012 05 11 the_human_rights_detectiv e print 2 3 12 11 12 Print » The human rights detectiv e » Print - Salon com colleagues who hav e to stay in Guatemala all the time Pressure and hostility and threats come with the territory ” — the territory of the forensic archiv ist Jefferson Morley is a staff w riter for Salon in Washington and author of the forthcoming book SnowStorm in August Washington City Francis Scott Key and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1 835 Nan Talese Doubleday Copyright © 2011 Salon com All rights reserved www salon com 2012 05 11 the_human_rights_detectiv e print 3 3