RIGHTS-PERU: Family Seeks Release of US Detainee

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Mar 10 1999 (IPS) - Supporters of Lori Berenson, a US citizen currently serving life imprisonment on treason charges in Peru, are seeking her release and return to the United States.

Mark and Rhoda Berenson, Lori Berenson’s parents, told reporters Wednesday that they had given up hope of an earlier goal: a fair, public trial for their daughter, who was accused of acting as a leader of the leftist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

“It’s clear that there’s an unwillingness (by the Peruvian government) to give an open trial, and the impossibility of getting a fair trial,” Rhoda Berenson said. “We think enough is enough – she should come home.”

Mark Berenson added that his daughter’s eyesight was failing, the result of three years imprisonment in the poorly-lit, high- altitude Yanomayo Prison before she was recently transferred to the lower-level Socabaya Prison.

“The government of Peru has violated 10 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its treatment of Lori,” he argued, including the right to fair judicial proceedings and the prevention of inhumane and degrading treatment.

Berenson’s parents denied the Peru’s charges of “treason against the fatherland” against their daughter, who was accused of planning a takeover of the Peruvian Congress with several alleged MRTA members.

On March 2, a US delegation became the first group besides Berenson’s family and UN and other officials to meet the detainee in Socabaya Prison. The group spent two hours with Berenson and reported that her hands had become purple and inflamed, and that she suffered problems with her eyesight and digestion.

“We are very concerned about Lori’s welfare,” said the Rev. Lucius Walker, director of Pastors for Peace and one of the delegation members. “She ought to be released and allowed to come home.”

Walker said Berenson told the delegation that, when she was first captured in November 1995, she was detained along with one woman who had five untreated bullet wounds which eventually became infected and required her to use a colostomy bag.

Berenson detailed her own harsh prison conditions, including rat- infested cells, lack of sleep and near-constant darkness at Yanomayo, which is two miles above sea level.

In a letter given to the delegation, Berenson denied all charges against her and asserted, “I have never been a member of the MRTA; I have never participated in the planning of a violent act, neither with the MRTA nor with anybody else; neither have I promoted violence.”

She accused the Peruvian government of denying her a fair trial, referring to the “faceless military tribunal” that passed sentence on her. Peruvian military courts try terrorism suspects in secret, in proceedings where the judges are hooded.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled last December that “the deprivation of Lori Berenson’s liberty is arbitrary” and contravened several articles of the Universal Declaration and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The Working Group criticised Peru’s military courts, saying that the closed trials “amount to a transgression of the standards of due process” substantial enough to constitute an arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

Pressure for Berenson’s release or retrial has grown in the United States, as well, with The New York Times arguing in an editorial that her trial was “a sham” because “she was not allowed to challenge evidence, cross-examine prosecution witnesses or call witnesses of her own”.

Berenson and the hundreds of Peruvians tried in military proceedings “should be retried in civilian courts,” the newspaper said.

Rhoda Berenson noted that the US State Department has expressed its own hope for a civilian trial for Lori, but added, “Hoping and pushing for it are two different things.”

Despite such pleas, the government of President Alberto Fujimori made no move to lessen Berenson’s sentence, and only recently transferred her from Yanomayo Prison to Socabaya, because of health reasons.

Amy Goodman, a reporter for the US-based Pacifica Radio who was a member of the delegation which visited Berenson last week, said Peru was trying to enforce “a complete blackout” on information about her.

Goodman noted that US Attorney General Janet Reno visited Peru the same week that the delegation had seen Berenson.

Goodman added that it was “unclear” whether Reno pushed Berenson’s case, although a recent US State Department human rights report accused Peru of having the worst judicial system in South America.