UW Human Rights Center suing CIA for El Salvador civil war documents

Matt Spaw • Jan 12, 2018

Jan 12, 2018

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                <h1>UW Human Rights Center suing CIA for El Salvador civil war documents</h1>
                <h2><p>The Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington is suing the CIA for refusing to declassify documents related to U.S. involvement in El Salvador’s civil war. According to a story by Joel Connelly of seattlepi.com, the main point of the suit is to reveal the</p></h2>
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               <p>By <a href="/author/matt-spaw-crosscut-com/">Matt Spaw</a></p> 
              <p><time datetime="2025-02-04T05:00:00-08:00">Jan 12, 2018</time></p>
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            <p>The Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington is suing the CIA for refusing to declassify documents related to U.S. involvement in El Salvador’s civil war. According to a <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2015/10/01/uw-human-rights-center-will-sue-cia-for-stonewalling-information-request-on-assassinations/?ref=avalancheghost.one">story by Joel Connelly of seattlepi.com,</a> the main point of the suit is to reveal the possible involvement of a retired Salvadoran military officer, Col. Sigifriedo Ochoa Perez, in what is known as the 1981 Santa Cruz massacre. Also at stake are documents that may relate to the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who is one step short of the Catholic Church's sainthood.</p><p>The lawsuit will be laid out Monday at a conference at the University of Washington Law School. It is unusual, as Connelly points out, for a major state university to be suing a federal agency like the CIA, especially because the UW is one of the nation’s leading recipients of federal research dollars.</p>
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The Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington is suing the CIA for refusing to declassify documents related to U.S. involvement in El Salvador’s civil war. According to a story by Joel Connelly of seattlepi.com, the main point of the suit is to reveal the possible involvement of a retired Salvadoran military officer, Col. Sigifriedo Ochoa Perez, in what is known as the 1981 Santa Cruz massacre. Also at stake are documents that may relate to the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who is one step short of the Catholic Church's sainthood.

The lawsuit will be laid out Monday at a conference at the University of Washington Law School. It is unusual, as Connelly points out, for a major state university to be suing a federal agency like the CIA, especially because the UW is one of the nation’s leading recipients of federal research dollars.

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By Matt Spaw

Matt Spaw, a former intern at Crosscut, is a journalism student and a writer at The Daily of the University of Washington.