Thursday, Mar. 29, 2012

Almudena Bernabeu

Age: 39
Occupation: International attorney

A Spanish-born lawyer at San Francisco's Center for Justice and Accountability, 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 helped obtain 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.