By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jul 17 2008 (IPS)

The Peruvian justice system is to prosecute members of the governing American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA, or Aprista Party) for creating the Rodrigo Franco Commandos (CRF), a paramilitary unit alleged to have murdered five people during the first administration of current President Alan García (1985- 1990).

Alan García, right, with his former interior minister Agustín Mantilla. Credit: Courtesy of La República newspaper

APRA denies the existence of the illegal paramilitary unit, named after respected Aprista leader Rodrigo Franco Montes who was killed by Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas on Aug. 27, 1987.

But prosecutor Julio César Cordero has found proof of the existence and operation of the CRF. The CRF is accused of killing at least five suspected guerrillas, allegedly in reprisal for crimes against leaders and officials of the governing party committed by insurgents in the late 1980s.

After assessing the results of the prosecutor’s investigation, Judge Teófilo Salvador decided that there was convincing evidence of the organisation of the CRF and its illegal activities. The case file was opened on May 28.

Salvador accuses Agustín Mantilla – who was personal secretary to García, responsible for organising APRA, deputy minister, minister of the interior, and chief of the party’s presidential campaign in 2000 – of being an accessory to five murders.

According to prosecutor Cordero’s report and Salvador’s prosecution order – which were seen by IPS – there is no doubt that the CRF was created by Mantilla, who took advantage of his position as deputy minister and minister of the interior to organise the commandos for the purpose of eliminating presumptive guerrillas belonging to the Shining Path and Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

The CRF is alleged to have murdered Manuel Febres, the lawyer defending Osmán Morote, a founder and leader of Shining Path, in 1988; Saúl Cantoral, the head of the miners’ union which was holding a national strike, in 1989; and Cantoral’s partner Consuelo García, an organiser who worked with the miners’ wives.

CRF is also being prosecuted for kidnapping and murdering Miguel Pasache and Javier Porta in 1989, two students and alleged MRTA activists who were negotiating a ransom for an air force general captured by that guerrilla group.

According to the judge and the prosecutor, Mantilla recruited a group of loyal Apristas to carry out these criminal operations, and put them in touch with police and army officers, with whom they committed the murders.

The Apristas used to meet with Mantilla in a house in the San Isidro district in Lima that had been used as García’s electoral campaign headquarters in 1985. Former CRF members have confirmed this.

The independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to help clarify human rights violations committed during the 1980-2000 counterinsurgency war, recommended in its final report in 2003 that those responsible for the CRF – still active in spite of plenty of evidence on the identities of its leaders – be investigated and punished.

Also in 2003, a Congressional investigative commission, headed by lawmaker Ernesto Herrera, concluded that the CRF was closely linked to APRA after hearing testimony from former members and ex-police officers about the murders.

But even today, APRA leaders deny or express doubts that the Rodrigo Franco Commandos ever existed.

“I never knew about the CRF, or ever supposed it existed,” said lawmaker Mercedes Cabanillas, a former Aprista presidential candidate and former minister. “I do not know, nor have I ever known, anything about a death squad supposedly made up of Apristas. And I have nothing more to say on the matter.”

The prosecution document by Salvador states that the CRF was “a vertical, rigid, disciplined and clandestine organisation… There is sufficient evidence to show that a strong hierarchical structure was at the service of Agustín Mantilla… It was made up by a group of young Aprista members or sympathisers.”

According to Salvador, “Mantilla, as deputy Interior minister, managed economic resources and had access to privileged intelligence information, as well as power to allocate salaries, weapons, vehicles and other materials in the course of his work.”

The operational chief of the CRF was Miguel Ríos, a man Mantilla trusted, who managed the house in San Isidro where CRF members stayed and where Mantilla held meetings with them.

Salvador was also convinced by evidence that the CRF members received “pay equivalent to public institution salaries,” in the guise of advisers’ fees.

The CRF itself claimed responsibility for the murders of Febres, Pasache and Porta.

The police blamed the killings of Cantoral and García on Shining Path, despite denials by the guerrillas. While leading a strike by Peru’s National Federation of Miners, Metalworkers and Steelworkers, Cantoral received death threats and then was abducted and held for eight hours by members of the CRF, the judicial investigation says.

“The judicial branch and the prosecution have not proved that the Rodrigo Franco Commandos really existed, or that Agustín Mantilla was the head of such an organisation,” Aprista lawmaker Javier Velásquez told IPS.

“Opening an investigation does not mean that Mantilla has been tried and convicted. An investigation has begun, and it must be allowed to finish. Then it will be established whether or not Rodrigo Franco Commandos existed and whether it committed the murders,” he said.

Velásquez refused to sign the report of the 2003 congressional investigative commission on the activities of the CRF.

“The report contained enough evidence about the actions of the CRF,” Ernesto Herrera, the former head of that commission, told IPS.

“We heard testimony from very reliable witnesses, some of them members of the police, who spoke about their participation in the CRF and the murder of, for example, miners’ leader Saúl Cantoral. I hope the justice system will clear up this case and present the truth about this sinister APRA personality, Agustín Mantilla, to the Peruvian people,” he added.

On Feb. 27, 2001, the authorities released a video, taped in March 2000 by Vladimiro Montesinos – then adviser to President Alberto Fujimori (1990- 2000) – showing Montesinos giving 30,000 dollars to Mantilla for APRA’s presidential campaign.

Both Montesinos and Fujimori are in prison and on trial for corruption and crimes against humanity.

APRA has expelled Mantilla, although it is common knowledge that he maintains ties with the party.

One of the accused who has turned state’s witness, former Army Intelligence agent Juan Pampa, provided the CRF with information on the movements of lawyer Febres, who became one of their victims.

At the time, Pampa had infiltrated the Association of Democratic Lawyers, a group of defence lawyers for Shining Path guerrillas. Later he would become a member of the Colina Group, an illegal paramilitary squad that carried out the massacres of Barrios Altos and La Cantuta in 1991 and 1992, under the Fujimori regime.

Pampa is therefore a link between the CRF and the Colina Group, many of whose members have already been convicted and sentenced.

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