Jennifer Jean Casolo is an American citizen who was arrested on November 26, 1989 by Salvadoran government troops during the "Final Offensive" of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in San Salvador.
These critics stated their belief that the government used the Casolo incident as part of an effort to threaten and discredit the entire foreign religious community in El Salvador.
After spending the Christmas holiday with her family in the U.S. Casolo undertook a nationwide public speaking tour to declare her innocence and denounce the Government of El Salvador and the United States' involvement in that country.
[citation needed] She became a peace activist, later worked as a lay volunteer in a Catholic Parish in Honduras and in 2001 began a PhD program in Geography at the University of California at Berkeley.
She now has her Masters and PhD from University of California at Berkeley and has published on issues such as gender and land rights in Honduras and historical memory and indigenous territorial struggles in Guatemala.