During the mid-1980s, he travelled to Nicaragua and lived there for almost three years. He worked for a Nicaraguan domestic human rights organisation which provided hard evidence of human rights abuses during the war between the elected Nicaraguan Government (The Sandinistas) and the United States backed "Contras" in which the subject of human rights became highly contested. Every major human rights organisation including Amnesty and Americas Watch accused the US backed contras of systematic abuse against Nicaraguan civilians. He travelled to the war-zones and obtained corroborated eyewitness accounts which were passed on to international human rights organisations. He also travelled widely in El Salvador, during its civil war, and Guatemala, too. (His interests in Latin America affairs continued much later with long research trips to Chiapas in Mexico, and along the US-Mexican border concentrating on the city of Juárez.)