Fourth Circuit Cites Professor Keitner

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit relied on Professor Chimène Keitner’s scholarship in its decision in Kuiper v. Reyes Mena affirming that former foreign officials cannot use sovereign immunity as protection against allegations of torture, slavery, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killing. 

In 1982, four Dutch journalists and their guides headed to guerrilla-controlled territory in El Salvador to report on the human toll of the country’s civil war. They were ambushed and killed by a Salvadoran military patrol before they could reach their destination. 

In 2024, Gert Kuiper, the brother of slain journalist Jan Kuiper, sued Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena under the Torture Victim Protection Act. Gert Kuiper alleged that Reyes Mena led the military units responsible for killing the journalists and was actively involved in the decision to kill them.

The Fourth Circuit opinion denying Reyes Mena’s claim to immunity cited Keitner’s article “Foreign Official Immunity After Samantar,” which followed the landmark 2010 Supreme Court case Samantar v. Yousuf, in which Keitner wrote an important amicus brief. The Reyes Mena decision also relied on the Fourth Circuit’s earlier opinion on remand in the Samantar case, which cited two of Keitner’s articles. 

Professor Keitner is a leading authority on international law and civil litigation and served as the 27th Counselor on International Law in the U.S. Department of State.