In May of 2018, after more than two years of discussions, the University of Washington settled its 2015 Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the UWCHR against the CIA. The UWCHR’s lawsuit resulted in the declassification of 139 documents regarding Sigifredo Ochoa Pérez, a former Salvadoran Army officer implicated in human rights violations, including the 1981 Santa Cruz massacre and the 1982 El Calabozo massacre. We are pleased with this outcome, and are continuing our work to further struggles for truth, justice, and accountability through access to information.

In the New York Review of Books, journalist Jonathan Blitzer profiles UWCHR Director Angelina Godoy and draws on research by our Unfinished Sentences project documenting retired Salvadoran Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa Pérez’s command of army units implicated in war crimes: Godoy is the director of the university’s human rights center, a small, interdisciplinary body run by a few