...Goni and Sánchez Berzain will pay an unspecified amount to the victims’ families who were killed during country-wide protests in 2003, known as the Gas War. After failing to reach a solution to the unrest, Goni and Sánchez Berzain fled to the United States, where they have lived ever since—Goni outside Washington D.C. and Berzain in southern Florida.

A jury had awarded $10 million in damages to the families in 2018. “The fact that a U.S. jury could see the injustice done to people who are, on the surface, so very different from them, is a tribute to our common humanity,” says Judith Chomsky, a cooperating attorney on the case from the Center for Constitutional Rights. But in an unusual move, the presiding judge, James Cohn, overturned the verdict. He maintained that the evidence presented was inadequate to establish liability and to prove that the two had a “preconceived plan to kill innocent civilians.” An appeal contesting Cohn’s ruling by the victims’ families led to the settlement announced last week.

“With this agreement, the 2018 jury verdict remains intact, and there can be no further appeals,” Thomas Becker, a lawyer from Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, who has pursued the case nonstop for 20 years, told the Bolivian press.  His voice cracking from emotion, he continued, “I want to thank everyone for inviting me to work on this case. It has been the honor of my life to learn from you, share with you, and struggle with you. The world now knows there is less impunity thanks to the Bolivian people.” ...

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