Santa Clara Magazine

How to nail a dictator

The 2012 Alexander Law Prize honors Spanish human rights advocate and attorney Almudena Bernabeu, who has spent 15 years pursuing justice for victims across Latin America, Africa, and the world. The 2010 recipient, Shadi Sadr, appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of Santa Clara Magazine.

As an attorney with the Center for Justice and Accountability—a nonprofit human-rights law firm in San Francisco—the 2012 Alexander Law Prize recipient, Almudena Bernabeu, leads the firm’s Latin America and Transitional Justice Programs. She has brought cases against human rights abusers in El Salvador, Colombia, and Peru for atrocities ranging from torture to genocide. 

Bernabeu is currently serving as the lead private prosecutor on two high-profile human rights cases before the Spanish National Courts, representing survivors of Guatemalan genocide (including Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum) and against the Salvadoran officials alleged to be behind the massacre of six Jesuit priests and two female employees in 1989. The eight white crosses in front of Mission Santa Clara memorializes the priests and their co-workers.

She and her team’s exhaustive work to find evidence in the Guatemalan genocide case is featured in the 2011 documentary Granito, How to Nail A Dictator.

“Almudena Bernabeu is an outstanding lawyer who has bravely stepped up time and time again to bring justice to victims of atrocities in other nations,” said Santa Clara Law Dean Donald Polden. “She exemplifies the Alexander Law Prize ideals of devoting one’s legal skills to alleviate suffering, injustice and inequality.”

Prior to her work at the Center, Bernabeu worked with two NGOs affiliated with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, helping with asylum and refugee clients from Latin American, North and Central Africa, and the Balkans. She has also worked pro bono for Amnesty International, Spain, and as an investigator for the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

She was recently elected vice president of the Spanish Association for Human Rights, and serves as a board member of a group pursuing justice in Equatorial Guinea, EGJustice.

Bernabeu received her law degree from the University of Valencia School of Law, and is a Ph.D. candidate in public international law at UNED University in Spain.

The Katharine and George Alexander Prize is awarded annually by SCU’s School of Law to recognize lawyers around the world who dedicate their career to correct injustices.

Click here to view a video of Bernabeu’s acceptance speech at Santa Clara University on March 14, 2012. To check out past winners of the Alexander Law Prize, visit the Alexander Law Prize website.