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PERU: Massacre Participant Unsuccessfully Seeking Asylum in US

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Mar 5 2008 (IPS) - In a desperate attempt to keep out of the reach of the Peruvian justice system, which is investigating a 1985 massacre of 69 highland villagers by the military, retired army captain David Castañeda is seeking – unsuccessfully so far – political asylum in the United States.

Castañeda alleges that he cannot return to Peru because he has received death threats from the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas that he fought against in the second half of the 1980s.

Officers Castañeda, Telmo Hurtado and Juan Rivera led the army units that killed 30 women, 23 children, and 16 mainly older men on Aug. 14, 1985 in the village of Accomarca in the southern highlands region of Ayacucho, where Sendero rebels were supposedly hiding.

The legal investigation concluded that Hurtado commanded the massacre, Rivera posted troops around the houses where the rounded-up victims were locked up, shot, and burnt to death, so that no one could escape, and Castañeda cut off the road and paths into the village with his “Tigre” patrol unit.

The three former military officers, who are wanted in Peru in connection with the Accomarca case, all separately took refuge in the United States.

Hurtado and Rivera were arrested in that country in April 2007 for violations of U.S. immigration law and remain in prison while their deportation to Peru is being processed. But Castañeda escaped arrest because he had already applied for political asylum.

However, in September 2006, a U.S. appeals court in the state of Massachusetts turned down his request for asylum because he was implicated in the Accomarca massacre and on the grounds that he failed to adequately demonstrate that he was facing death threats from Sendero Luminoso.

Sources with the Tercer Juzgado Supranacional de Derechos Humanos, a human rights court in Lima, told IPS that Castañeda faces an international arrest warrant in connection with the Accomarca massacre.

In its report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that investigated Peru’s 1980-2000 civil war states that Castañeda headed up the Tigre patrol unit in the military operation that culminated in the massacre.

IPS had access to documents from the court file on the case, including a confidential report by the Inspectoría de la Segunda Región Militar del Ejército (inspectorate of the army’s second military region), which states that in the first days of the operation, the patrol unit ran into two local farmers who were shot to death when they failed to obey an order to “halt!”

The inspectorate’s report recommended bringing charges against Castañeda in a military court for “abuse of authority,” a euphemism used in Peru’s military justice system to refer to “excesses.” But the military judges not only acquitted him in connection with that incident, but also with respect to his participation in the Accomarca killings.

As confirmed by his service record, despite his connection with the massacre, Castañeda not only continued taking part in the counterinsurgency war in the 1980s and 1990s, but was promoted to captain.

In March 1991, he applied for retirement, and in August of that same year he obtained tourist visas for the United States for himself, his wife and their two daughters, after which he settled in Miami, Florida.

In 1993, even though he had overstayed his visa, he applied for political asylum on the argument that he and his family were facing death threats from Sendero Luminoso.

But the U.S. immigration authorities rejected his Jul. 7, 1999 request on the grounds that he failed to provide sufficient evidence to establish his eligibility for asylum.

All signs pointed to his imminent deportation, but Castañeda refused to give up. A report by the U.S. immigration authorities showed that he had appeared before different immigration judges 11 times by 2002. But all of his arguments for political asylum failed.

He alleged, for example, that he had fought Sendero Luminoso in the city of Tumbes, along the border with Ecuador. But no one has found evidence that the guerrillas were active in that area.

He also claimed that he was shot at by Sendero insurgents, that they threw an explosive at him in Lima, and that they later attempted to kidnap his two daughters as they were leaving school one day. But he provided the immigration judges with no proof of any of these incidents.

An October 2004 request was once again turned down, after which he appealed, presenting copies of his acquittal by the Peruvian military court in the Accomarca case.

But his application was again rejected, on the argument that the verdict by the Peruvian military court was questionable and that the military justice system in that country had often let human rights violators off the hook.

The attorneys representing the families of the Accomarca victims were informed in mid-February that Castañeda had once again filed an appeal, seeking to overturn the refusal of political asylum.

The retired army captain maintains that neither he nor his men fired a single shot in Accomarca that day and that they were unaware of the murder of civilians because they were located far from the site of the killings.

However, the U.S. immigration judge who turned down his latest asylum request argued that Castañeda took part one way or another in the persecution of Accomarca villagers and that the blocking of escape routes “facilitated” the massacre.