Stories written by Ángel Páez
Ángel Páez has extensive experience working in Peru as an investigative journalist on stories about corruption, drug trade, political violence, arms trade and other forms of organised crime. He joined IPS as a correspondent from his country in 2005. Born in 1963, Páez studied journalism at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima and started working at the daily newspaper La República in 1985. In 1990 he founded the Unidad de Investigación, a collective of journalists that uncovered the corruption scandals surrounding the government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). Páez was the first to publish a story on one of those cases, which later led the Chilean courts to hand in the perpetrator to the Peruvian authorities. A correspondent in Lima for the Argentinean newspaper Clarín and the Mexican magazine Proceso, Páez is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington-based organisation that promotes global investigations.

RIGHTS-PERU: Fujimori Rewarded Death Squad

By Ángel Páez
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori personally encouraged and rewarded the leaders of a secret army intelligence service squad for the kidnap and murder of 25 civilians in 1991 and 1992, according to secret military documents.

RIGHTS-PERU: Terrorist Supporters or Victims of Witch Hunt?

By Ángel Páez
Peru’s counter-terrorism police dismantled the local chapter of the Continental Bolivarian Committee (CCB-CP) and arrested its members on charges of supporting terrorism and having ties to Colombia’s guerrillas.
Exhumation of Accomarca victims. Credit: Courtesy La República

RIGHTS-PERU: US Judge Awards Millions in Damages to Massacre Survivors

By Ángel Páez
A U.S. federal judge ordered retired Peruvian army major Telmo Hurtado to pay 37 million dollars to two survivors of a 1985 massacre in which 69 indigenous peasants, mainly women and children, were killed in the highlands village of Accomarca.

PERU: Massacre Participant Unsuccessfully Seeking Asylum in US

By Ángel Páez
In a desperate attempt to keep out of the reach of the Peruvian justice system, which is investigating a 1985 massacre of 69 highland villagers by the military, retired army captain David Castañeda is seeking - unsuccessfully so far - political asylum in the United States.
Cirila Pulido and Teófila Ochoa Credit: Courtesy of La República

RIGHTS-PERU: Survivors Come Face-to Face with Massacre Leader

By Ángel Páez
Teófila Ochoa and Cirila Pulido, survivors of a 1985 massacre in Peru, said that seeing retired Peruvian army officer Telmo Hurtado in prison-issue clothing and shackles was the closest they have come to seeing justice done.

PERU: Poverty Provides Growing Number of ‘Drug Mules’

By Ángel Páez
Anti-drug police at Peru’s "Jorge Chávez" international airport in Lima have had their hands full over the last year, arresting nearly two "mules" a day, each carrying an average of five kg of pure cocaine.

RIGHTS-PERU: Death Squad Member Implicates Fujimori

By Ángel Páez
In the early 1990s, the administration of then Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori negotiated an amnesty for an army death squad in exchange for keeping secret the government’s involvement in two massacres in which 25 people suspected of being left-wing guerrillas were killed.
Harry W. Shlaudeman Credit: Courtesy of La República

RIGHTS-LATIN AMERICA: ‘Operation Condor’ Was No Mystery to Washington

By Ángel Páez
The intelligence services of Peru and Argentina kept Washington informed in real time about a 1980 joint clandestine operation in which four alleged members of Argentina’s Montoneros guerrilla movement were "disappeared," according to documents declassified in the United States.
Generals Francisco Morales Bermúdez and Pedro Richter, wanted by the Italian courts. Credit: Courtesy of La República

PERU: Operation Condor Tentacles Stretched Even Farther

By Ángel Páez
Legal investigations in Italy and declassified U.S. government documents prove that Peru was also involved in Operation Condor, created by the military regimes ruling South America in the 1970s and 1980s to cooperate in the elimination of dissidents.

PERU: Fujimori Admits to Signing Key Documents

By Ángel Páez
Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori confessed that he signed two secret memos in 1991, recommending promotions and raises for army intelligence officers shortly before they were organised in a death squad that went on to kill 25 people suspected of belonging to the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

PERU: Fujimori Faces First Sentence

By Ángel Páez
Peruvian congressman Alejandro Aguinaga, Alberto Fujimori’s doctor, said the former president was recovering well Tuesday from the "crisis of hypertension" that he suffered after his angry outburst on the first day of the human rights trial against him.

RIGHTS-PERU: President Brandishes His Own Terror Threat

By Ángel Páez
Fear has struck again, chilling the hearts of hundreds of Peruvians who were sent to prison on false charges of belonging to the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas or the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) during Peru’s 1980-2000 civil war.
Credit: Courtesy of La República

PERU: Shining Path Rebels and the War on Drugs

By Ángel Páez
A surviving faction of Peru’s Shining Path guerrillas has launched an offensive against anti-drug police units in the Apurímac and Ene river valleys - an area known by the acronym VRAE - in one of the country’s main coca-growing and cocaine-producing regions.
Solano, third from left, on patrol in Basra. Credit: Norman Solano.

PERU-IRAQ: A Year in Hell for 1,000 Dollars a Month

By Ángel Páez
Former Peruvian noncommissioned army officer Norman Alfonso Solano is happy because he has once again been recruited to work as a private security guard in one of the most dangerous places in the world: Iraq.

CORRUPTION-PERU: Profiting from Misfortune

By Ángel Páez
Federal, provincial and municipal authorities in Peru benefited from the disaster caused by the Aug. 15 earthquake, lining their pockets with public funds and misusing humanitarian aid sent by foreign and local donors.
Credit: Courtesy of La República, Lima

RIGHTS-PERU: Evidence Against Fujimori ‘Overwhelming’

By Ángel Páez
There is "overwhelming" evidence that former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) was involved in death squad killings committed by army intelligence agents, chief prosecutor Pablo Sánchez told IPS.
Mayor Juan Mendoza Credit: Claudia Alva Linares

PERU: Distribution of Earthquake Aid Under Scrutiny

By Ángel Páez
Mayor Juan Mendoza seems perfectly at home. "Juanito, I need a coffin," "Juanito, we need tents in my barrio," "Juanito, the food’s run out in my neighbourhood," local residents clamour as they cluster around him.
Credit: Claudia Alva Linares

PERU: Little Help for Slum-Dwellers Left Homeless by Quake

By Ángel Páez
"We have come here because God sent us," says pastor Pedro Leyva Díaz. He looks tired after distributing food, clothes and sweets in dozens of poor communities devastated by the earthquake in southern Peru.

PERU: Earthquake Death Toll 450 and Climbing

By Ángel Páez
The fishing port of Pisco, 167 kilometres south of the Peruvian capital, was the town worst hit by the devastating earthquake which shook nearly the whole country for two minutes late Wednesday, reaching a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale. The death toll continues to climb.
Teófila Ochoa and Cirila Pulido Credit: Angel Páez

PERU: No Peace for Living or Dead 22 Years After Massacre

By Ángel Páez
Cirila Pulido and Teófila Ochoa were 12 and 13 years old when a Peruvian army patrol entered their village of Accomarca in Peru’s southern Andean region of Ayacucho on Aug. 14, 1985 and murdered 69 villagers, including the two girls’ mothers and siblings.

DISARMAMENT-LATIN AMERICA: Cluster Bomb-Free Region?

By Ángel Páez
Peru's proposal to make Latin America the world's first cluster munitions-free region received broad support from the countries that took part in this week's intergovernmental conference on a future global treaty against the weapons in Lima, said local authorities.
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