Under international law, victims of human rights violations have the right to remedy and redress. This must not only be available in law, but accessible and effective in practice. Any invocation or exploitation of state secrecy must be precluded. A ruling on 28 April 2009 by a US federal court is a welcome development in this regard. At the centre of the case before it was the US administration’s bid to use a level of secrecy that would block any judicial scrutiny of the human rights violations in question.
