Human rights violations – especially politically motivated ones – in an individual country rarely happen in a vacuum. They are often enabled by the inaction, omission or active participation of other countries, sometimes direct neighbours and sometimes those that are ideologically aligned to the regime in question. This last quarter century has seen the continuing globalisation of repression in extraordinary rendition and torture flights post 9/11, the offshoring of terrorism suspects in a US base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the more recent deportation of alleged criminals and ‘illegal’ immigrants to the 40,000 capacity mega-prison, CECOT, in El Salvador.

This meticulously researched book by Francesca Lessa, about the ways in which South American dictatorships collaborated in persecuting political opponents across the region, has lessons that are more relevant than ever, especially in regard to how such policies can be legally challenged, and those responsible brought to book. The book’s careful documentation of the multiple efforts made by what the author calls ‘justice seekers’ and ‘impunity challengers’ in the region is a beautiful illustration of how it takes many hands, and a great deal of patience, persistence and creativity, to bend the ‘moral arc of history’ towards justice. The scope of this study is truly impressive, taking the reader from the most immediate attempts, in the face of the terror of the times, by relatives and other ‘justice seekers’ to document, protest, advocate and challenge the kidnappings, disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions that were routine in Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and elsewhere in the ‘anos de chumbo’ (years of lead), right through to the most recent trials for former political leaders and military personnel.

The two parts of the book tell a complementary story. The first half expands on what was already known about Operation Condor, whose peak years were 1976–8, offering a more nuanced five-phase periodisation of the origins, institutional evolution and eventual decay of coordinated transnational repressive practices for a wider timeframe from 1969 to 1981. This approach, and the second part of the book, which traces the many and varied attempts at justice from 1978 to the more recent Condor trials in Italy, significantly extends and updates the material available in books such as John Dinges’ The Condor Years. In outlining the formation and action of two transnational networks, one repressive, the other advocating for basic human rights protection, the book breaks down, in the latter case, what the author sees as unhelpful dichotomies in the literature between state and civil society action, between domestic court activity and international/extraterritorial litigation. In a world currently undergoing deglobalisation and unprecedented challenges to cosmopolitan ideals, this is a hopeful analysis.

Methodologically, Francesca Lessa’s contribution draws on an extraordinary depth of research, including archives, legal documents, victim testimony, interviews with many of the justice seekers and ethnographic fieldwork observing the two major trials in Argentina and in Italy. Making sense of over 3,000 archival documents, and dozens of legal documents and criminal investigations and over 100 interviews is no mean feat: the book strikes a careful balance between telling what is the heart of the story – the human suffering of the victims and the persistence and bravery of their loved ones - and ensuring that this book also stands as a historical record in itself, in which every detail matters. ‘Hinge cases’ that helped to drive a wedge in the wall of impunity are carefully related to make wider points about the ways in which these human rights violations, and their potential judicialisation, were gradually reframed away from the military logic of impunity.

The skill of the author – piecing together thousands of fragments of the historical record to form a bigger picture of intentional transnational human rights violations – mirrors that of the challengers, seekers, catalysts and strategic facilitators that she describes. Indeed, the role of obstinate and careful documentation demonstrates clearly how historians, archivists and document analysts have been key to seizing opportunities over several decades to demand redress for the victims and their families. The book also acknowledges the strategic agency of the many professionals and actors – journalists, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, relatives, international courts – in forming an alternative transnational network able to take this painfully collated evidence and use it judicially to challenge the transnational terror network.

From a socio-legal perspective, there is a fascinating story about how, paradoxically, the legal strategies that abusers used to protect themselves would eventually be deployed against them. Every door slammed shut on justice prompted a search for a backdoor. A clause in an 1881 extradition treaty between Italy and Uruguay allowed an Uruguayan Navy Captain to be prosecuted, in Italy, for crimes against Uruguayans. A long-forgotten 1930s article in the Italian criminal code extended the courts’ jurisdiction beyond normal territoriality. Political and military leaders were sure that they were safe behind their amnesty laws, but by blocking justice in domestic courts, they forced justice seekers to look to international fora, where the former’s very obduracy became a justification for the emerging doctrine of universal jurisdiction. The attempt to cover their crimes, for example, with mass disappearances and cross-border abductions, opened the door to prosecutions for the continuing crime of kidnapping, and to extraterritorial judicial actions.

When President Aylwin came to power in Chile after the Pinochet dictatorship, he pledged to do what he could ‘en la medida de lo posible’. This might have suggested resignation in the face of military influence and the Amnesty law. But, instead, the creativity and agency of the transnational networks of justice seekers expanded the measure of the imaginable, of ‘lo posible’. Since 1978, when charges were first brought against those who murdered Chilean exile Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronnie Moffit in Washington DC, over 100 former heads of state, government ministers and senior military leaders have been convicted of crimes against humanity. This definitive account bears moving witness to the courage and persistence of the justice seekers – in which I include the author – that have enabled grieving relatives to achieve some measure of justice. This powerful assertion of how the universal principles of human rights and the rule of law can be defended across national boundaries is very timely.