Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-PERU: Death Squad Convictions May Doom Fujimori

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Apr 9 2008 (IPS) - In a ruling that has far-reaching consequences for the trial of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, an anti-corruption court sentenced former chief of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) Julio Salazar to 35 years in prison for approving the operations of the Colina death squad, which killed nine students and a professor at the University of La Cantuta in July 1992.

Salazar, a retired general, was sentenced on Tuesday as an accessory before the fact, for instigating the crimes. The court also sentenced three former members of the Colina Group, ex-army intelligence service (SIE) agents Fernando Lecca, José Alarcón and Orlando Vera, to 15-year prison terms, for having participated in the kidnapping, torture and murder of the professor and students and the incineration of their bodies.

The former head of the SIN and the three former members of the Colina Group were found guilty of murder and forced disappearance.

But the salient point in the verdict of the court presided over by Inés Villa, one of the most respected anti-corruption judges in Peru, is that it concludes that the Colina Group, made up of SIE agents, acted with the knowledge and authorisation of Fujimori (1990-2000).

A video was shown on Monday at Fujimori’s separate trial for human rights abuses, in which the former chief of the Colina Group, Martín Rivas, said that the death squad acted with Fujimori’s approval because its operations were part of the war against the insurgent Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The former president denied the allegation.

Pedro Supo, another leader of the Colina Group who testified at Fujimori’s trial, said that at La Cantuta and in other Colina operations, the aim of the death squad “was not to put the subversives at the disposal of DINCOTE (the anti-terrorism police), but to track them down and eliminate them.”

The court concluded that the Colina Group, which operated from August 1991 to December 1992 and killed 50 people, was part of the SIN, nominally commanded by Salazar, but in practice directed by Vladimir Montesinos, Fujimori’s all-powerful security adviser.

“The Colina Group was attached to the National Intelligence Service and answered to the Presidency of the Republic, with the mission of eliminating subversives or opponents of the regime,” says the verdict, quashing the central argument of Fujimori’s defence lawyer, César Nakazaki, who claims that his client never approved a plan to murder guerrilla suspects, nor the formation of a paramilitary special operations group.

The court said that the SIN, in accordance with a law amended by Fujimori, answered directly to the president.

Therefore, the judges established that Fujimori was an accessory to the murders perpetrated by the Colina Group, in line with the prosecution’s accusation against the former president.

Salazar was a member of the military high command that participated in the “self-coup” carried out in April 1992 by then president Fujimori, and he remained head of the SIN for most of Fujimori’s two terms in office.

The First Anti-Corruption Court is trying the heads and members of the Colina Group, while the Special Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, presided over by César San Martín, has been exclusively assigned the trial of Fujimori.

“Justice comes late, but it has come,” said Raida Cóndor, mother of one of the students killed at La Cantuta, who waited with other relatives for nine hours outside the Callao Naval Base to hear the reading of the sentence. “The verdict confirms everything that Fujimori denies. It’s clear that he authorised the murders, and he should pay for them.”

Gisella Ortiz, the sister of another of the murdered students, stressed that the court had determined that the Colina Group was part of the structure of the army and the SIN.

“The order to kill came from above. It’s no longer only we who are saying this: the justice authorities are now saying it,” said Ortiz.

Colina Group leaders Martín Rivas and Carlos Pichilingüe, as well as other members of the organisation, were not on trial because they are serving 20-year sentences handed down by a military tribunal in 1994.

Vital testimony was provided by former SIE agent Marcos Flores, who turned state’s evidence under the witness protection programme. Flores, one of the soldiers who received Fujimori’s congratulations in July 1991 for participating in “anti-terrorist intelligence operations,” was the secretary of the Colina Group and collected key documents which he later handed over to the authorities.

Flores also testified that Salazar, the former head of the SIN, tried to persuade him to change his evidence, and he said the general had taken part in the meetings at which the Colina Group was founded, and attended a meal with its members.

The four members of the army convicted in the La Cantuta case are not the only ones facing trial. Former presidential adviser Montesinos, former army commander Nicolás Hermoza (1991-1998) and others are awaiting sentencing.

“Of course this verdict sets an important precedent, because it confirms the existence of the Colina Group, which has always been denied by Fujimori and the army, and which took its orders from above,” said José Peláez, a prosecutor in the Fujimori trial.

“It’s a historic verdict,” said Miguel Jugo, the executive secretary of the non-governmental Human Rights Association (APRODEH), who was persecuted by the Colina Group precisely because he defended the relatives of the victims of the La Cantuta massacre. “Justice has begun to move forward. This is a premonition of Fujimori’s conviction and sentencing,” he said.

The court acquitted retired officers Aquilino Portella, Carlos Miranda and Julio Rodríguez, as well as Manuel Hinojosa and Ángel Pino, for lack of evidence.

In line with a 2006 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the First Anti-Corruption Court ordered those convicted to pay reparations equivalent to 50,000 dollars to each parent, spouse and child of the victims, and 20,000 dollars to each sibling.

At Fujimori’s trial, several former Colina Group agents testified unanimously that they acted on the orders of the highest authority, and executed state policy against subversion.

Fujimori’s defence counsel denied this, alleging that the witnesses’ testimony was only indirect, and that there was not a single document or person proving that the former president ordered the killings.