According to Viterna, the lack of any opposition in El Salvador allowed the anti-abortion lobby to take a step further than in the other countries and effectively pressure the police and courts to begin prosecutions and hand down guilty verdicts.
Once again, the government has lifted the statute of limitations so that it can begin prosecutions for crimes committed during the communist period that were not prosecuted for political reasons.
Those courts, however, have never taken a very independent view of any form of Kurdish self-assertion.In early February, the government began prosecution of the People's Democratic Party (Hadep), the main party that currently dares to demand some rights for Turkey's Kurds.
Critics of the military commission system seized on Judge Allred's ruling as the latest in a long line of challenges that have frustrated the Bush administration in its efforts since 2001 to begin war crimes prosecutions.
The judge, Joan A. Lenard, ordered jury selection for the retrial to begin Jan . 7and barred prosecution and defense lawyers from discussing Thursday's outcome with reporters.
With the legal landscape clear at the moment for the prosecutions to begin, the military officials said the new courthouse would ease a potential logjam of trials.
Prosecutions may be brought by local authorities and must be started within six months from when the local authority has gathered enough information to begin legal proceedings, but prosecutions cannot be brought later than three years from when the offence was committed.
