JENNIFER HARBURY

Virtual Truth Commission

"Jennifer Harbury is the widow of Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a Mayan resistance leader assassinated in Guatemala by high level military officials. Upon learning of her husband's secret imprisonment and torture, she carried out an international campaign which revealed the CIA's involvement in her husband's murder. Harbury speaks on human rights and the history of U.S. intervention in Guatemala. She reveals U.S. complicity in human rights violations, as well as coverups of such violations. She discusses the legal and constitutional issues raised by this and similar cases and the status of the 1996 peace accords in Guatemala." Biographical Sketch on the page of Speak Out which arranges speakers tours. P.O. Box 99096 Emeryville, CA 94662 Phone: (510) 601-0182 Fax: (510) 601-0183 Email to: speakout@igc.org Jennifer Harbury

1996: Gunshots Fired at Harbury's Home

A bullet entered the home of Jennifer Harbury less than twenty- four hours after her attorney's car was fire bombed in Washington, DC on January 5, 1996. Harbury lives with members of the Assisi Community in Northwest Washington, DC. Other human rights activists and religious also live in the community, including Sister Dianna Ortiz, a US nun who was abducted, raped, and tortured by State security forces in Guatemala in 1989.

Although gunshots are not uncommon in the neighborhood, residents and other involved in Guatemalan issues are concerned that the two events may be related, since they occurred within a twenty- four hour time span. They could be taken as direct threats against Jennifer Harbury and other persons involved in efforts to have justice done in the case of the murder of her husband and the hundreds of thousands of violations committed by Guatemalan security forces and government-sponsored death squads.

Some residents of Assisi Community are members of Coalition Missing, an association of US citizens who are victims of State- sponsored violence in Guatemala (including killings, disappearances, stabbings, and rapes). Coalition Missing works to expose the truth and have justice done in their cases and all human rights cases in Guatemala. These incidents are not the first time that members of the Coalition have been threatened: Since her return to the United States, after her abduction, rape, and torture, Sister Ortiz has been active in seeking the truth in her case. She has received numerous intimidating calls and has been harassed.

Peter Kerndt, brother of Ann Kerndt, who was killed in 1976 with Father William Woods when their small plane crashed mysteriously in Guatemala (many believe it was shot down by the Guatemalan Armed Forces), has also been the subject of intimidation. In early 1995, Kerndt organized an event in Los Angeles where Jennifer Harbury spoke about her husband and the situation of human rights in Guatemala. Over 200 people attended the event. The day after the event, Kerndt received a phone message at his work place. A man said, "Peter, I'm going to kill you."

Sky Callahan was brutally attacked in Guatemala in July 1995. After returning to the States, he spoke out against the Guatemalan military and participated in public events to publicize his case. Callahan has received threatening phone calls, his home was shot at by unknown individuals, and a dead cat was left at his doorstep.

Coalition Missing will continue to seek the truth about each one of the members' cases and follow up on other acts of violence and intimidation that have occurred in the United States against persons and organizations involved with human rights work in Guatemala.

Source: Press Release, January 10, 1956: Gunshots Fired at Harbury's Home
For more information about these events or Coalition Missing in general, call Anna Gallagher, attorney for Coalition Missing, at (202) 483-8811 or (202) 529-6599.

Jennifer Harbury and Richard Nuccio receive 1997 Cavallo Awards for Moral Courage

Jennifer Harbury protested US government secrecy on her missing husband, Guatemalan Revolutionary, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez. Harbury, a Harvard-educated attorney, campaigned for a release of information on her husband with public exposure of US government cover-ups, and hunger strikes in Guatemala City and Washington, DC. She recently published her story in a book, Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala.

Richard Nuccio, a former State Department Official, lost his security clearance when he provided classified information to Congress proving that the CIA withheld information on Bamaca As a State Dept. official, Nuccio gained access to a CIA report saying that Harbury's husband had been held incommunicado, interrogated and probably killed. The CIA, it seemed, knew something but did not pursue the matter. Nuccio exposed the CIA's cover-up to Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ). As a result, Nuccio lost his federal security clearance, paralyzing his career and future with the State Dept., an act which broke 3 whistleblower protection laws. 1997 CAVALLO AWARDS FOR MORAL COURAGE

Harbury at Cornell, 1996

Jennifer Harbury '74 received a standing ovation before and after she described her ordeal discovering the fate of her husband, Efrain BamacaVelasquez, who disappeared in Guatemala in March 1992. About 300 people heard her moving address in Statler Auditorium on April27, which was sponsored by the Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations,the Cornell chapter of Amnesty International and the Cornell University Program Board.Jennifer Harbury '74 tells of hunger strike, government lies Cornell University Chronicle. See also related story which notes hundreds of thousands of indigenous people have lost their lives at the hands of military leaders in the employ, or at least educated and guided by America's CIA.

Other Linkis

Amnesty International Calls for a Complete Investigation of the Bamaca Case and for Protection of Those Involved in Guatemala and in the Us; News Release, Guatemala, 2 February, 1996

Jennifer Harbury Encounters Hostile Crowd in Guatemala, LASNET Archive, 1995

Guatemalan Death-Squad Kingpin Linked to CIA by John Veit, High Times. Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) shocked reporters at a March press conference when he revealed that Michael Devine, an American innkeeper in Guatemala, was tortured to death with the approval of a US Central Intelligence Agency informant in 1990. The informant, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, a graduate of the US Army's School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, GA, was on the CIA's payroll for five years and is renowned as a "murdering spy," according to The New York Times. At the Flores military base in Guatemala's rainforest, Alpirez's troops killed countless suspected "subversives," says Amnesty International. Alpirez's complicity in the deaths of Devine and the Guatemalan guerrilla fighter husband of American attorney Jennifer Harbury sparked media coverage detailing atrocities by the Guatemalan military, which was responsible for some 20,000 civilian deaths in the 1980s. Covert CIA aid took up the slack after Congress reduced military aid following Devine's killing.

Despite the signing of the final peace accords in Guatemala in December, 1996 peace and respect for human rights have remained elusive. Right wing death squads have continued to target Mayan leaders, unionists, jurists, social workers, and human rights and religious leaders despite the clear prohibitions in the accords. Disturbingly, much of the worst repression has focused upon any person seeking to break the official impunity that has long shielded those who kidnap, torture and kill. Recent cases in point are the murders of Bishop Juan Gerardi and public prosecutor Sylvia Jerez. Ms. Jerez had been assigned to several cases involving the army, including my own....Network in Solidarity with the people of Guatemala, Statement of Jennifer K. Harbury: June 25, 1998

"Jennifer Harbury is a U.S. attorney and author now working with Global Exchange in San Francisco, California. She has worked on human rights for the people of Guatemala since 1984, where she traveled extensively compiling human rights information and assisting victims of military repression. The thirty-five year civil war in Guatemala, and the military death squads that killed 200,000 people and wiped forty-four Mayan villages from the map, became the subject of her first book Bridge of Courage (Common Courage Press 1993). She is also author of Searching for Everardo (Warner Books 1997), a book chronicling her efforts to find her husband, assassinated by CIA Guatemalan military agents. Ms. Harbury will speak about her husband's murder, her case against the CIA, the Guatemalan military, and their notorious human rights abuses." Write-up in connection with presentation by Jennifer Harbury, Dirty Secrets and Human rights" US-Guatemalan Relations, University of Florida, Center for Latin American Studies, Hispanic Student Association, Women's Studies, and Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, March 31, 1999

Jennifer Harbury's books include Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, & the CIA in Guatemala. This true story recounts the trials of Jennifer Harbury, an American woman who took on the United States government in an attempt to uncover the truth about the disappearance of her husband, Mayan guerrilla leader Everardo Bamaca Velasquez.

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Updated Jan 1, 2000