Lori Berenson Loses in First Appeal Step Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Mon Feb 18, 8:01 PM ET (via Yahoo) Peru Upholds Berenson's Sentence By CRAIG MAURO, Associated Press Writer LIMA, Peru (AP) - Peru's highest court has upheld a 20-year prison sentence against American Lori Berenson for collaborating with leftist rebels in a thwarted plot to seize Congress, the presiding justice said Monday. The ruling was her last option for appeal under Peruvian law. Berenson, 32, who has already been imprisoned for six years, must now serve out the sentence that ends in 2015 unless she's pardoned by Peru's president. Berenson condemned the decision and said she was joining hundreds of jailed guerrillas in a hunger strike to protest prison conditions and Peru's anti-terrorism laws. She was convicted in June of terrorist collaboration in the failed bid by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement to take over Peru's Congress in 1995, but was acquitted of being a member of the rebel group. It was the New York native's second terrorism conviction. She was first convicted of the crime in 1996 by a military tribunal and sentenced to life in prison. In that trial, the court ruled that Berenson was a rebel leader and aided guerrillas by renting a house that served as their hide-out and posing as a journalist to enter Congress to gather intelligence. Berenson denied the charges and said she didn't know her housemates were rebels. The life sentence was overturned in August 2000 and a new trial ordered after years of pressure from the United States. The Supreme Court was Berenson's final avenue of appeal. Her lawyer said he will now seek a pardon from Peru's president, Alejandro Toledo. Her parents, Mark and Rhoda Berenson of New York, have already urged Toledo to grant such a pardon. Peruvian officials had declined to comment on a pardon as long as the case was in the courts. There was no official reaction to Monday's announcement. Rhoda Berenson said that she will also ask the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States, to step up its review of her daughter's case. The case could eventually reach the OAS court, which has the power to overturn her conviction. As a member state of the court, Peru is obliged to adhere to the tribunal's rulings. Presiding Supreme Court judge Guillermo Cabala announced the decision Monday. He said a panel of five judges that oversees criminal appeals reached its verdict last week, but held off releasing it until Monday. Cabala said that four of the judges voted to uphold the 20-year sentence. Cabala voted to reduce the sentence to 15 years. Berenson, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites) student, considers herself a political prisoner and says authorities unfairly portrayed her concern for social justice as a terrorist agenda. She condemned the Supreme Court's decision in a statement released by her parents, who have spoken regularly with their daughter by telephone from New York. "This judicial process was a farce from its beginning to its end. I am innocent of the charges," Berenson said in the statement. Berenson's parents said they will appeal to both Toledo and President Bush for her release. "We know that Lori is innocent, and we remain optimistic that she will be released. We call upon President George W. Bush to right this wrong and to secure Lori's release," the Berensons said in the statement. The State Department had no immediate comment. Bush will visit Peru on March 23 to meet with Toledo to discuss trade and combating drug trafficking and terrorism. Peruvian Foreign Minister Diego Garcia Sayan last week did not rule out that the two presidents could discuss Berenson's case. Bush urged Toledo during a meeting in Washington last June to consider humanitarian concerns in Berenson's case. "Lori was a victim of the previous administration," Rhoda Berenson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from her New York home. "She was a political pawn for their personal gains and she's already been in jail for six years under horrendous conditions," she said, referring to the previous administration of President Alberto Fujimori. * Monday February 18 3:03 PM ET (via yahoo) Peru Top Court Upholds Berenson's 20-Year Sentence by Jude Webber LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peru's top appeals court on Monday upheld the 20-year sentence on terrorism charges of Lori Berenson, a U.S. woman convicted of aiding Marxist rebels, exhausting all her legal options in Peru, a senior judge said. `Her sentence has been confirmed,'' Guillermo Cabala, president of the section of the court which reviewed her `very complex'' case, told Reuters, adding it was a majority ruling. He said four of the five judges had wanted the sentence upheld while he had argued for it to be reduced to 15 years. It was not clear whether Berenson herself, who began a hunger strike on Monday in support of jailed leftist rebels who want the anti-terrorism laws under which they were tried repealed, had been informed of the Supreme Court ruling. But her father said he was not surprised. Her lawyer has said Berenson, who denies all the charges against her, saying she is no `terrorist,'' had entertained `zero expectations.'' `I'm optimistic we'll get her home eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later. I'll be fighting like hell for it,'' Mark Berenson told Reuters from his home in New York. He said he would petition President Bush, who makes an official visit to Peru on March 23-24, to apply an article of the U.S. penal code to `come to the rescue of any Americans wrongfully held in a foreign country.'' The Supreme Court ruling exhausts all avenues of appeal in Peru for the 32-year-old New Yorker, arrested in late 1995 and jailed for life as a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) by a hooded military judge. Her conviction was overturned in 2000 and a civil retrial ordered. That court convicted her last June of helping MRTA rebels with whom she lived plot an attack on Congress and sentenced her to 20 years, meaning that with time served, she would be jailed until two weeks after her 46th birthday. OPTIONS DWINDLE Berenson's only options now are to pursue a recourse to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which can refer her case to the region's top rights court; to hope for a pardon from Peru's President Alejandro Toledo; or to ask to serve her sentence in a U.S. jail. She has said she will not do this because she considers herself innocent and her trial biased. `No one can deny that Lori is an apologist for MRTA ideology but she had nothing to do with anything they were doing. There is no evidence of that,'' Mark Berenson said. `Lori is innocent of what she was charged with. I say that with 100 percent confidence,'' he added. He said he would not travel to Peru to seek to petition Bush in person, but noted that the president had already raised her case with then president-elect Alejandro Toledo last June. Bush at that time urged humanitarian factors be taken into consideration in her case. Berenson spent years in freezing, high-altitude Andean jails and says she suffered eye, stomach and joint problems which still trouble her. Asked if he thought Toledo would pardon her, Mark Berenson said: `I hope that as an honorable man, he will take a good look at her case. ... He was educated in the United States so he has a different perspective on fairness and due process.'' Polls show most Peruvians view Berenson as a terrorist and remember the image of her after her arrest -- wild eyed, screaming in Spanish and defending the rebels' ideals. * Monday February 18 2:11 PM ET (via Yahoo) Berenson Exhausts Appeals of Peru 20-Year Sentence LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peru's top appeals court on Monday upheld the 20-year sentence on terrorism charges of Lori Berenson, a U.S. woman convicted of aiding a Marxist rebel group, exhausting all her avenues of appeal in Peru, a senior judge said. `Her sentence has been confirmed,'' Guillermo Cavala, president of the section of the court which reviewed her case, told Reuters, adding it was a majority ruling by four judges to one. The ruling exhausts all avenues of appeal in Peru for the 32-year-old New Yorker, who was arrested in late 1995 and jailed for life as a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement by a hooded military judge. Her conviction was overturned in 2000 and a civil retrial ordered. That court convicted her last June of aiding MRTA rebels with whom she lived plot an attack on Congress and sentenced her to 20 years, meaning that with time served, she would be jailed until two weeks after her 46th birthday. Berenson's only options now are to pursue a recourse to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which can refer her case to the region's top rights court; to hope for a pardon from Peru's President Alejandro Toledo; or to ask to serve her sentence in a U.S. jail. She has said she will not do this because she considers herself innocent. * The New York Times - February 18, 2002 Where the Bodies Are Buried in Peru by Juan Forero QUISPILLACTA, Peru, Feb. 16 - For 19 years, Cristina Huamani Quispe knew where her husband was buried, just up the dirt road from this Quechua Indian hamlet, in a shallow grave were his bullet-riddled body was tossed with those of six other men. But Mrs. Huamani, 46, never sought help from the authorities because an army patrol had killed the men after accusing them of being members of Shining Path, a radical rebel group. She could not recover the body of her husband, Pedro Núñez, fearing retribution from soldiers. So she simply tried to forget. "I could not do anything," she recalled in Quechua, speaking through an interpreter. "I always felt alone. I would just cry." Now, 15 months after the fall of the autocratic government of President Alberto K. Fujimori, a special government commission is opening a window into 20 years of state-sponsored repression and rebel terror that tore this country apart. It is starting the emotionally wrenching process of investigating the killings and disappearances of thousands of people, many of them from this province, Ayacucho. The group has begun interviewing relatives of victims here in southern Peru and disinterring the remains of Mr. Núñez and the six other men, who were buried here on May 14, 1983, at the height of the violence. Taking advantage of a political opening that would have been unthinkable a short time ago, the commission will collect testimony in private and hold public hearings, a first in Latin America, where victims of violence and public officials can give their accounts. The work of the group, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is aimed at determining the root causes and political climate that led to the deaths of 30,000 people in Peru. The commission is intent on assigning blame; its findings can be forwarded to prosecutors for possible legal action against rights violators. "The truth commission in Peru can name names, institutions, and it can say so-and-so military official killed so-and-so farmer," said Javier Ciurlizza, executive secretary of the commission. "We decided that this will not be closed. We need to vent these things." How much will be vented, though, is unclear. Though the commission has ambitious goals and a broader mandate than similar commissions in Latin America, it is underfinanced. Only $3 million of the $10.7 million it needs to operate has been collected, Mr. Ciurlizza said, with nearly half coming from the United States. Investigators are also in a race against time because their work must be completed next year, when a voluminous report tracing Peruvian violence through three presidential administrations is to be made public. Commission workers said the work had been overwhelming. There are thousands of interviews to be conducted, including those of two former presidents, Fernando Belaúnde Terry and Alan García Pérez, under whose administrations most of the violence took place. The commission is also intent on studying reams of American documents, including newly declassified diplomatic cables that show how United States officials in Lima had received unconfirmed reports about extrajudicial killings and death squad activities from sources in the Peruvian security services. Commission members acknowledge that the sheer magnitude of the task might limit what they learn. "This is what makes us sleepless at night," Mr. Ciurlizza said, "that if we do not do this right, then we lose the trust of the country." The community with the most riding on the results is here in Ayacucho, a poverty-stricken region of vast mountains and lush fields where Shining Path embarked in 1980 on a rampage of mass killings, bombings and assassinations in an effort to turn Peru into a radical Maoist state. The army responded with vicious repression in which hundreds accused of being rebel members or collaborators were killed, usually Quechua-speaking young men who had been forced from their homes. "They killed people who were Indians, people who did not know what the soldiers were saying to them," said Rosio Vargas, the government's human rights ombudsman in this province. "They were the most vulnerable people, the easiest to kill." Now the commission is trying to give the people of Ayacucho a voice they never had. Detailed testimony is being collected from villagers to determine how relatives or neighbors were killed, and by whom. Because the region is dotted with unmarked graves - nearly 6,000 people were "disappeared" in Peru, most from Ayacucho and two neighboring provinces - the commission is trying to determine where mass graves are situated and whose bodies are in them. Remains are to be cataloged, then turned over to relatives for reburial. The forensic team that is handling exhumations is especially determined to find out who gave the orders for the deaths. José Pablo Baraybar, who leads the team, said many graves were concentrated around a former military base east of here, in Totos, where prisoners were tortured and killed. Already, investigators know about two captains who commanded soldiers in the region, officers known to investigators only by their aliases, Jackal and Hyena. Leonidas Pacotaype, 45, whose husband was tortured and killed by soldiers, remembers Jackal well, saying the tall, light-skinned officer was "abusive to our community" and "the one who sent our people to Totos, the one who made the decisions." Her husband, Francisco Huamani Galindo, 37, disappeared hours after kissing her and their three children goodbye early one morning in 1983 as he left for a long hike to a nearby village to buy provisions. Ms. Pacotaype later learned that he had been intercepted by an army patrol, tortured with a group of 14 other men in a town named Chiuschi and then shot dead, their bodies left in a pit that was then covered by soldiers. Now, she has provided the commission with everything she remembers from those violent days - not just what she heard about her husband's disappearance, but what he was wearing that day, whether he had ever suffered broken bones or had dental work, details crucial to the identification of remains. "At the very least, I want to one day see the bones of my husband," Ms. Pacotaype said. "I ask for justice. That is all I want." Commission workers have tried to assure the relatives of the dead, or those who suffered torture or other acts of violence, that they will be heard. But the commission has also warned that not every grave will be uncovered, given limited resources and time. Instead, the commission hopes to unearth perhaps 20 graves, with the hope that the findings and publicity will galvanize President Alejandro Toledo to adopt a long-range plan to disinter bodies across the country. That does not sit well with the victims' families, said Angelica Mendoza, who leads an organization of mothers and wives of men who disappeared. "There will be no justice for us, no peace for our people, until we find all the bodies," said Ms. Mendoza, whose son, Arquímides Ascarza, 19, was taken from her home in 1983 and never seen again. "They can not leave behind the rest. We want all the mass graves opened." For now, though, the villagers of Quispillacta have welcomed the commission's work, saying the exhumation of the seven bodies buried near here has finally put the past to rest for some families. The relatives of the dead, like Cristina Huamani, received the bones of their loved ones in small, wooden boxes, which they promptly reburied after holding ceremonies. "My father was killed like a dog and buried nowhere," said Roberto Núñez Huamani, 33, whose father, Julián Núñez, was among those who died with Ms. Huamani's husband. "Now I feel like we have given him some justice." 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