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In Defense of Lori Berenson
by Mark L.
Berenson / July 2005 issue of Socialist Action newspaper
My daughter Lori has been wrongfully incarcerated in Peru since the
night of Nov. 30, 1995, when she was arrested on a public bus in Lima. She has been a victim of injustice on
three occasions: First, by a
draconian Peruvian justice system that had received worldwide condemnation,
second by a Peruvian propaganda machine that made her into the symbol of a
“terrorist monster,” and third by an international court that caved into
political pressure.
In January 1996, Lori was sentenced by a hooded military tribunal
(now deemed illegal) to life in prison for treason against the
Fatherland—while a
hooded soldier held a gun to her head.
When the Supreme Council of Military Justice was provided with
evidence to show she was not a leader of a subversive group, the charge
forming the basis for treason against the Fatherland, the charge and the
sentence were annulled and her case remanded to the civilian court system.
The civilian trial contained numerous violations of due process and
was led by a judge who had prejudiced himself against Lori in the press two
years earlier as well as in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais
(April 22, 2001) during her trial. Nevertheless, this judge refused to
recuse himself.
On June 20, 2001, Lori was convicted of collaboration and given a
20-year sentence, which was upheld in February 2002.
Once all judicial remedies
were exhausted within Peru, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,
which had been studying Lori’s case since January 1998, unanimously ruled
(7 to 0) in April 2002 that Peru’s anti-terrorism laws failed to comply
with the American Convention on Human Rights and needed to be thoroughly
changed and that Lori’s rights needed to be totally restored.
Although one month earlier (March 22, 2002) President Bush and
Secretary of State Powell raised Lori’s case with Peruvian President Toledo
on a visit to Lima and urged Peru to use the anticipated forthcoming
decision of the Inter-American Commission as a mechanism for providing a
humanitarian resolution, when the ruling was announced the Peruvian
government balked, forcing the Inter-American Commission to take Lori’s
case to the Inter-American Court. A Court decision was binding on Peru, a
Commission decision was not.
The position of the Bush administration was that Peru had the right
to be heard in the Court. In
November 2002, the Inter-American Court accepted the case of the
Inter-American Commission against Peru. For two years we waited, hoping and
expecting real justice – never considering that this highest legal body in
the Western Hemisphere would capitulate to political pressure. But it did.
The “bottom line” is that on Nov. 25, 2004, my daughter Lori was
sacrificed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which abrogated its
fundamental responsibility of protecting individual rights in order to
placate the inept, unpopular, corrupt, but nevertheless fledgling
democratic government of Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo.
The Toledo administration, backing off on its commitment to the
Organization of American States and to the Bush administration, as well as
to us, that it
would abide by the ruling of the Inter-American Court, put enormous
political pressure on that international body by declaring it would simply
ignore any decision favorable to Lori and also by threatening to withdraw
from the Court’s jurisdiction.
Anticipating a Court ruling for Lori’s freedom, which, evidently,
was the Court’s intention based on its preliminary deliberations and analysis
as of Nov. 10, Peruvian politicians who seemingly never agree on anything
united against Lori and roused the public against the Court by calling it
“soft on terrorism” - words that could only embarrass this highest legal
body of the Organization of American States in our “post-9/11” global
campaign against
terrorism.
Rather than be rendered powerless by a disgruntled member country,
the Court, instead, immorally reversed its own position over the past 12
years and overruled the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which
had unanimously declared that Lori’s civilian trial, like her
earlier military trial, failed to provide fairness and due process, that
the Peruvian court failed to establish guilt in accordance with its own
Constitution, that Peru must bring its draconian anti-terrorism laws into
compliance with international standards, and that Lori must receive moral,
psychological and monetary indemnification for her wrongful suffering.
The capitulation of the Inter-American Court to Peruvian political
pressure is a stain on fundamental human rights and on the protection that
citizens in the Western Hemisphere deserve. These words have been
articulated by Javier Valle Riestra, former prime minister of Peru, and by
Waldo Albarracin Sanchez, current ombudsman of Bolivia. And the lack of
logic expressed in the Inter-American Court’s ruling is documented in the
dissenting opinion provided by Chilean Judge Cecilia Medina Quiroga, the
only judge who maintained her integrity in the 6 to 1 vote.
My daughter Lori remains in prison today simply because she is a
U.S. citizen. Her high-profile and her highly politicized case began
moments after her arrest when then President Fujimori waived her passport
on Peruvian television, something he did not do with passports of detainees
from Panama, Bolivia, or Chile. Fujimori decided to “make an example” out
of Lori as a warning to others who might venture to Peru and speak the
truth about his dictatorship thinly veiled as a democracy.
To this day, Lori claims she is innocent of the charges for which
she was convicted in both her military trial (treason against the
Fatherland of Peru
for the role of leadership in a subversive group) and later civilian
trial (collaboration with terrorism).
The Fujimori-Montesinos-controlled media fabricated many horrendous
stories about Lori, a few of which she
was actually “accused” of in her trial.
Nevertheless, in her civilian trial she was convicted only as a
“secondary accomplice,” but this forms part of the charge of collaboration
with terrorism—the minimum sentence for which is 20 years. Lori was
acquitted of the role of leadership that formed the basis of her
military trial conviction. She was
also acquitted of both membership in a subversive group and militancy in a
subversive group.
Lori was never involved in any act of violence, in Peru or
elsewhere, and was never accused of such. In reviewing her civilian trial
sentence in February
2002, Guillermo Cabala, then president of Peru’s Supreme Appeals
Court, argued he did not agree with the conviction for collaboration—he did
not think that the charge was proved. He argued that “Lori Berenson is not
a terrorist and has not committed a terrorist act,” and he opined that Lori
should have been convicted on a lesser charge with a much lower sentence.
Peruvian justice, based on the Napoleonic system of proving
innocence, is foreign to our judicial culture. To me, it is often incomprehensible. In Peru, murders,
rapists, kidnappers, violent offenders, and armed robbers receive short
sentences and are back in the streets on average in five years.
Readers can form their own opinion about Lori by reading her own
words, which speak for themselves.
They can visit the website www.freelori.org
in English (click on “In Lori’s Words”) or www.lorilibre.org
in Spanish (click on “Escritos de Lori”).
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