Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-PERU: Death Squad Member Implicates Fujimori

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Jan 29 2008 (IPS) - In the early 1990s, the administration of then Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori negotiated an amnesty for an army death squad in exchange for keeping secret the government’s involvement in two massacres in which 25 people suspected of being left-wing guerrillas were killed.

Pedro Supo, a former leader of the Army Intelligence Service’s (SIE) Colina death squad, revealed that information when testifying Monday in the trial against Fujimori, who ruled the country from 1990 to 2000 and is now being tried for corruption and human rights abuses.

Supo told the court that as part of the agreement with the government to let off the hook the Colina group members who killed 15 people at a barbecue in the Barrios Altos neighbourhood in Lima and 10 others at the La Cantuta University in the early 1990s, the officers were to be paid 100,000 dollars each and the non-commissioned officers 50,000 dollars.

The aim “was not to put the subversives at the disposal of DINCOTE (the anti-terrorism police), but to track them down and identify and eliminate them,” he said.

The former army intelligence agent said he took part in five operations to “eliminate” supposed Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas.

The operations included the murders of 15 local residents of Barrios Altos on Nov. 3, 1991; of six small farmers in the town of Pativilca on Jan. 29, 1992; of six more farmers in the town of Santa on May 2, 1992; and of journalist Pedro Yauri and six members of the Ventocilla family on Jun. 24, 1992.

Supo underlined that the Colina group was part of the army and acted with the full knowledge of the high command.

“The objective was not to capture (the suspected guerrillas) but to eliminate them,” said Supo when questioned by prosecutor Avelino Guillén. “We all knew that the objective of the operations was to kill them.”

“Was it obvious that you were going to kill them?” asked the president of the court, Judge César San Martín.

“Of course, we knew we were going to eliminate them,” responded the former death squad member. “When we went out, we already knew we were going to kill.”

“Kill people?” pressed San Martín.

“Yes, sir, kill,” he answered.

Fujimori’s defence counsel maintains that Colina acted on its own, and that the army had no orders to murder suspected insurgents, but instead was to hand them over to the justice system.

With respect to the Barrios Altos killings, Supo said the Colina group was after Shining Path insurgents who had recently attacked the president’s bodyguards, and who supposedly lived in that area.

He said that before the operation, the head of the death squad, army Major Santiago Martin, gave him instructions by mobile phone. “We have the green light, he said,” Supo told the court.

After opening fire on the group of people who were enjoying a traditional “pollada” or chicken barbecue, the Colina group members went to their base on the outskirts of Lima, where they found out that one of the victims was an eight-year-old boy, who Major Martin shot in the head when he pleaded for his father’s life.

“When we found out about the boy’s death, there was an argument, and some of the members tried to leave the group,” said Supo. “But Martin shouted at us ‘No one gets out of here alive!’ Quitting was not an option.”

It was later reported that the assailants actually went to the wrong address, and killed a group of people who were not suspects.

The next Colina operation was the kidnapping, torture and murder of a professor and nine students from La Cantuta University, carried out to avenge a Shining Path attack on a residential building in Lima’s fashionable Miraflores district.

Although Supo did not take part in that particular mission, he was fully informed.

When asked by the prosecutor whether the participating Colina group members knew that this operation also had the goal of murdering, rather than arresting, the suspects, Supo responded “yes,” pointing out that they headed to the university equipped with shovels and other digging implements.

“You make a hole, you place the victim in it, then you dump quicklime on the body and cover it with rocks and dirt,” he said, describing how the 10 La Cantuta victims were secretly buried.

When the Colina group killings were reported by the independent press, the Fujimori administration was forced to hand over the perpetrators. But they were given guarantees that after a summary trial, they would be amnestied, said Supo.

“Santiago Martin told me that we shouldn’t worry, that everything would be ok, and that in my case, I would not be touched,” he said. “Sure enough, in just 72 hours a military tribunal sentenced part of the members of the group and absolved me. I know the officers were paid 100,000 dollars and the non-commissioned officers 50,000.”

Supo himself was rewarded by the army by being sent to work in the Peruvian embassy in Russia, and on his return he was decorated for his participation in the (1980-2000) counterinsurgency war, after which he continued working for the army.

Although several members of the death squad were convicted by a military tribunal in February 1994, the ruling coalition in parliament approved an amnesty law in June 1995 which led to their release from prison.

According to Supo, Major Martin promised the Colina group members that the government would respond to their demands that they not be tried for the murders.

Prosecutor: “Who gave the orders?”

Supo: “Santiago Martin.”

Prosecutor: “And who was he answering to?”

Supo: “To the head of the Army Intelligence Directorate, General Juan Rivero,” who reported directly to then army chief Nicolás Hermoza – who in turn reported directly to Fujimori.

The witness told the court that he had decided to cooperate and testify because he was no longer afraid of his former boss, Major Martin, who, he said, had threatened to kill him and had even attacked members of his family to try to shut him up.

Fujimori’s defence attorney César Nakazaki then asked Supo if he had information that the murders were ordered by the president, to which the witness responded that as a “mere agent,” he had no ties to high-level authorities.

“Santiago Martin communicated with General Rivero, who coordinated with General Nicolás Hermoza,” he said.

Hermoza, who was army chief and head of the joint chiefs of staff from 1991 to 1998, was one of the regime’s most powerful men, along with Fujimori’s security adviser, Vladimiro Montesinos, who is now serving time in prison for numerous cases of corruption and human rights violations.