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RIGHTS-PERU: President Brandishes His Own Terror Threat

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Nov 30 2007 (IPS) - Fear has struck again, chilling the hearts of hundreds of Peruvians who were sent to prison on false charges of belonging to the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas or the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) during Peru’s 1980-2000 civil war.

Their anxiety began when President Alan García announced he would publish a list of the names of 1,800 "freed terrorists", so that people might recognise them and report them if they were participating in conspiracies against the state.

García made no distinctions between those who had served their sentences, those who were acquitted for lack of evidence, and those who were pardoned because their trials were deemed invalid.

In the president’s view, anyone who was ever imprisoned on terrorist charges should be closely watched, because they might be linked to recent armed actions by the remnant Shining Path group operating in the southeastern valleys of the Apurímac and Ene rivers, and in the Huallaga river valley in the Amazon jungle.

"I’m going to give the country the list of the 1,800 terrorists so everyone knows exactly who their neighbours are, and what each of the freed prisoners is doing," said García. "We can’t be so naïve as to believe they have completely changed, and that just because they have sworn on the Bible that they are democrats, they really are."

"Many of these liberated prisoners, who committed crimes and murders, are again pushing their sinister plans and mobilising other social sectors," he said.


The phrase "mobilising other social sectors" is a reference to demonstrations against the García administration’s economic policy, called by the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP).

CGTP secretary general Mario Huamán reacted sharply to the implied accusation.

García’s decision to make the list public came after five police officers were killed in two separate armed actions, on Nov. 1 and 13, in the country’s southeastern Andean highlands.

"As if it weren’t enough to have been unjustly imprisoned, now they’re persecuting us again, accusing us of terrorism," Gladys Canales, who spent eight years in the Santa Mónica prison because a "repentant terrorist" collaborating with the authorities accused her of allowing her house to be used for meetings of a Shining Path cell, told IPS.

In 1993 an anonymous military tribunal sentenced her to 20 years in prison on the unsubstantiated word of someone whom Canales never met, because her accuser’s identity was kept secret.

Practices of this sort were common during the regime of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is presently under arrest and being prosecuted on numerous charges of human rights violations and corruption.

"When I was arrested, I was blindfolded and taken to a cell in the basement of a prison, where they stripped me naked, hung me up and tortured me so that I would confess to being a Shining Path militant," said Canales, who is head of the National Coordinating Committee of Women Affected by the Internal Armed Conflict.

"I couldn’t stand the pain and I fainted. The torturers were frightened because they thought they’d killed me. Eight months later, they took me before a military court which sentenced me. In 2001, they pardoned me after my case was reviewed, and no evidence whatsoever was found against me."

More than six years after her release, just when she thought she could continue to rebuild her life without further problems, President García announced that he would publish her name as a "freed terrorist."

"We came out of prison with asthma, tuberculosis, severe psychological problems and other illnesses. The state was violent towards us, and now it’s taking away our dignity," Canales said.

"I spent two-and-a-half years in treatment with a psychologist, and so did my family, because after being in prison for eight years I couldn’t just come back home as if nothing had happened," she said.

In fact, 3,084 Peruvians accused of terrorism were released from jail, Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo recently told Congress, where he praised the president’s initiative and asked lawmakers for their support.

Del Castillo also failed to differentiate between the 878 people who were acquitted, 574 who served their full sentences, 174 whose sentences were reduced to time served, 473 who were released on parole, and others in a number of different situations.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Peruvian state to re-try all those convicted and imprisoned by military tribunals or "faceless" judges, because such trials were illegal. But the Fujimori administration refused to do so.

In 1998, Ombudsman Jorge Santisteban chaired a commission that reviewed the cases of innocent people imprisoned on charges of terrorism. Between 1998 and 2000, 502 people were pardoned.

During the transition government of President Valentín Paniagua (2000-2001), 165 people were released, and under President Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), 92 were freed.

Most of those released had been convicted on false evidence, accused by secret witnesses, or tried before anonymous or faceless military tribunals, methods which Fujimori used in his "war on terror."

Diego García Sayán, former justice minister in the Paniagua administration and now a judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, told IPS that informers who cooperated with the justice system were also pardoned.

"It’s dangerous to use the phrase ‘released terrorists’ as a blanket term. A terrorist is someone who has been convicted as such, not a person who was remanded in prison on a charge that was never proven. The majority of those who were freed were never convicted or sentenced. This is a witch hunt," García Sayán said.

"Publishing these names is a violation of the constitution. The law states that people who have been acquitted or have served their sentence cannot be treated as criminals," he said.

The present Ombudswoman, Beatriz Merino, said she opposed the publication of a list of "released terrorists", because it would stigmatise people who were acquitted or pardoned after no evidence could be found against them, or whose trials were found to be flawed or fabricated.

"People who were acquitted by the justice system could take legal action against the state if their names are published, and the law would be on their side," she said.

According to the National Prison Institute (INPE), 850 prisoners accused of terrorism were freed between 2003 and 2005, the vast majority "because no evidence could be produced against them, or the investigations were carried out improperly, and the judicial branch decided they should be released," Merino said.

The head of the Association of Innocent Released Prisoners (ARIL), Edgar Rivadeneyra, fears that the president’s move will take the country back to the years of persecution and finger-pointing.

"This violates everybody’s human rights," he told IPS. "It will mainly affect innocent people who were proved to have been unjustly accused, and convicted people who served their sentences in jail and are now rebuilding their lives in every sense of the word."

Rivadeneyra himself suffered injustice. He was accused of belonging to the MRTA in 1992, and a tribunal of faceless judges sentenced him to 20 years in prison. After nearly 10 years behind bars, in 2001, he was pardoned because the evidence against him had been fabricated.

"The Fujimori administration paraded many of us before the press, dressed up in striped convict uniforms, and accused us of the most heinous crimes. Later it was found that we were innocent, but we never even received an apology," Rivadeneyra said.

"If the list is published, ARIL will take legal action against the state, here and in international forums, because it would spell our death in society," he said.

 
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