Jennifer Harbury

Jennifer Harbury is a Harvard-trained lawyer and human rights activist. On March 12, 1992 her husband and URNG combatant Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, AKA Commander Everardo, was wounded in combat and captured by the military. CIA documents, attained by Ms. Harbury in 1996 through a Freedom of Information Act request, demonstrate that the Guatemalan military decided to fake his death in order to interrogate him.

Believing him to still be alive, Ms. Harbury went on several hunger strikes, both in front of the Guatemalan National Palace and the White House, demanding that his whereabouts be acknowledged and that he be tried in a court of law for any crimes which he may have committed. As she fasted in front of the White House in March of 1995, it was revealed by Congressman Frank Torricelli that the indeed the CIA had known of Bamacas capture and that he had been tortured and subsequently killed.

Ms. Harbury's focus then turned to finding the site of Bamaca's burial, exhuming the remains, and prosecuting the individuals responsible. At every step she has experienced extreme resistance from the Guatemalan legal system and the Government. As efforts to validate her marriage with Bamaca in the eyes of the Guatemalan court were unsuccessful, the case was recently admitted to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based out of Costa rica, which only accepts cases for which the domestic legal possibilities have been exhausted.