By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Sep 1 2008 (IPS)

The reopening of the investigation into the death of Marco Barrantes, a second lieutenant in the Peruvian army accused of spying by the military, revived his family’s hopes for justice and may lead to the filing of a lawsuit against the state by the widow of the Ecuadorean soldier murdered along with him.

Chief Prosecutor Pablo Sánchez has requested a new trial in the case of the 1988 kidnapping, torture and murder of Barrantes, allegedly by agents of the Army Intelligence Service (SIE), who suspected him of selling military secrets to Ecuadorean air force Sergeant Enrique Duchicela, then a military attaché at the Ecuadorean Embassy in Lima.

At the time, while President Alan García was serving his first term of office (1985-1990), the long-running boundary dispute between Peru and Ecuador had flared up again. In 1995 the two countries briefly went to war, and the dispute was finally put to rest in 1998 with the signing of a peace agreement.

Carlos Rivera, a lawyer with the non-governmental Institute for Legal Defence (IDL) who is representing Barrantes’ family, told IPS that the Aug. 20 decision to reopen the case will enable more evidence to be gathered against the accused.

The armed forces kept silent for years about the murder committed in the army’s headquarters, known as the “Pentagonito” (Mini-Pentagon), but the dead man’s relatives battled on until the justice system opened an investigation, nearly two years ago.

However, in spite of the evidence presented at trial, on Feb. 14, 2007 the First National Criminal Court acquitted those accused of the murder, on the grounds of lack of evidence.

General Oswaldo Hanke, who was the head of the SIE at the time of the murder, and Colonel Harry Rivera, then the head of SIE Counterintelligence (SIE-2), had told the court that Lieutenant Barrantes was never detained, and therefore the alleged crime could not have been committed.

Following the advice of their defence lawyer César Nakazaki, who is also counsel for former President Alberto Fujimori, currently on trial for a number of crimes committed during his 1990-2000 administration, the two retired officers said they had never ordered the capture of Barrantes, and the court accepted their testimony.

But prosecutor Sánchez takes the view that the court overlooked documents and testimony that prove that SIE agents abducted Barrantes as part of an operation known as “Plan Operativo Lucero,” which also included the capture of Sergeant Duchicela.

According to Rivera, important evidence that was disregarded by the First National Criminal Court includes a written statement and a taped confession by former SIE agent Jesús Sosa about his direct role in the kidnapping and murder of Barrantes and Duchicela.

Sosa, who was then a fugitive from justice and in hiding, handed over the document and tape to Barrantes’ family during the earlier trial because, he said, he had learned from press reports that the army high command was denying responsibility for the double murder. But the court ruled that this evidence, which could have cleared up the murders, was inadmissible.

The chief prosecutor’s decision document, seen by IPS, also indicates that the court disregarded the testimony of former agent Raúl Gamonal, who said he was held in a cell in the basement of the SIE headquarters in the Pentagonito with Barrantes, who told him there that he (Barrantes) had been accused by his SIE captors of spying.

“Now that former agent Sosa is in prison and is willing to testify about his participation in the kidnapping and murder of Barrantes, his testimony will be fundamental when the trial begins,” Rivera told IPS.

Reopening the case will also allow Duchicela’s widow, Martha Escobar, to bring a lawsuit against the Peruvian state for her husband’s murder.

“Only someone very powerful indeed could have ordered this crime – do not forget that my husband was with the Ecuadorean Embassy, and therefore had diplomatic immunity,” Escobar told the press when she learned of the new evidence that had been unearthed in the case of her husband’s disappearance.

Sosa stated in a written deposition that the person who ordered Plan Lucero to detain and execute Barrantes and Duchicela was “the then commander-in-chief of the army, General Artemio Palomino.”

“I was obeying orders, as I always was during the 17 years I was with the SIE. At the time, I served my country committing acts that ordinary justice regards as crimes, but always following orders from the chain of command,” Sosa’s testimony says.

According to Sosa’s sworn statement, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, the army officers who organised Plan Lucero were General Hanke, Colonel Rivera and Captain Jorge Miranda.

“The capture of Barrantes and Duchicela was only known to the army high command and to those of us who took part in the operation,” his statement says.

“Our work as agents ended with the detention and interrogation of Duchicela, whom Barrantes himself had identified as the foreigner to whom he passed on (intelligence) information,” he said.

In the same document, Sosa asked for forgiveness for the murders of Barrantes and Duchicela, and said that the military commanders kept the crimes a secret so that Peruvian society would not find out that the army had been infiltrated by a spy.

“The disappearances of Duchicela and Barrantes prevented a public scandal,” he wrote.

In an appearance by Sosa at the trial of Fujimori, the former SIE agent publicly confirmed his account of his role in the operation that led to the death of Barrantes in the SIE facilities at the Pentagonito.

Sosa’s earlier confession of his leading role in the crimes was first published by journalist Ricardo Uceda in his book “Death in the Pentagonito” in 2003, when the former SIE agent was still a fugitive from justice.

“Now that he is an accredited witness, Sosa can be called upon to declare in court what he has already stated in writing,” Carlos Rivera, the Barrantes family lawyer, told IPS.

“Sosa himself says that Barrantes and Duchicela were ‘disappeared,’ not just as suspected spies but because if the facts became publicly known, there would be a scandal, and the military chiefs would face courts-martial for the breach of national security. Now, however, it is time for justice to be done,” said Rivera.

Sosa knows that he will be sentenced for the crimes to which he has confessed, but he will not be the only one to be punished. His superiors, who rather than handing the suspected spies over to the ordinary justice system, chose to kidnap and murder them and incinerate their bodies, simply to save their careers and the army’s reputation, will also be held accountable.

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