Almudena Bernabeu

International Human Rights Latin America Expertise Policy and Law Expertise Conflict Resolution Immigration

About this Speaker

Leading International Prosecutor & Co-Founder of Guernica 37

A Spanish-born international attorney and Co-Founder of Guernica 37, Almudena Bernabeu has led the prosecutions of several of the worst perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Latin America.

By filing cases in the Spanish national court, which practices universal jurisdiction, she obtained extradition orders for the 20 El Salvadoran military officers implicated in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuits, and in 2011, she persuaded the court to include the rapes of 100,000 Maya women in its ongoing investigation of the Guatemalan government for genocide. Her work led to the historic judgment of former president of Guatemala, Efrain Rios Montt, who in May 2013 was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity against the Ixil Maya people. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Bernabeu also serves as a board member at Equatorial Guinea Justice, a U.S. based Human Rights organization, and is Chair of the International Human Rights Section at the San Francisco Bar Association. She is Vice-President of the Spanish Association for Human Rights (APDHE), and a member of the advisory board of the Peruvian Institute of Forensic Anthropology (EPAF), a forensic group providing evidence on human rights violations investigations and prosecutions. She holds a master’s in law from the University of Valencia School of Law, where she specialized in Public International Law. In 2012, Ms. Bernabeu won the prestigious Katharine & George Alexander Law Prize.