Lori Berenson

   

Lori Berenson (born 1969) is an American citizen currently serving a twenty-year jail sentence in Peru on terrorism charges.

Background

Berenson was born in New York City to Rhoda and Mark Berenson. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the early 1990s, she spent several years teaching English and doing translation and secretarial work for human rights organizations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. At one point, she worked as the personal secretary of a top Salvadoran rebel leader. Later, she worked as a freelance journalist while traveling in Peru.

Arrest

On November 30, 1995, Berenson was arrested on a public bus in downtown Lima, the capital of Peru, accused of collaborating with an insurgent organization, the Movimiento Revolucionaro Túpac Amaru (MRTA). She had been posing as a journalist of one of two left-leaning U.S. magazines and and accompanied by the wife of Néstor Cerpa, the MRTA second-in-command, acting as her photographer. They had entered the Peruvian legislature several times in 1995 to gather information. Anti-terrorist police accused Berenson of providing MRTA with detailed information on the floor plans of the Congress, its security and members, and that she rented an apartment and a house for them to use.

The arrest of Berenson and the other woman happened hours before an all-night siege of the rebel safehouse, in which three rebels and one police officer died and 14 guerrillas were captured. The police claimed that diagrams, notes, weapons and police and military uniforms found at the safe house suggested that the group was planning to seize members of Congress and trade them for captured guerrillas. Police seized from the house rented by Berenson a coded floor plan of Congress drawn by Berenson and a forged Peruvian election ID card bearing her photo.

In January 1996, the DINCOTE (Peruvian agency created to fight Drug Trafficking and Terrorism) staged a media event, in which they showed Berenson to the press. At the event, she appeared defiant and stated that the MRTA was not a criminal terrorist organization but instead a "Revolutionary Movement". Due to her tone and attitude, her words sounded like a radical political diatribe. Most Peruvians still believe she was definitely a member of the MRTA, which is considered a terrorist organization.

Trial

Berenson's lawyers argued that she had no prior knowledge of the planned attack, and that she believed that the information she gathered for an article on the Peruvian Congress would be used by the rebels to form a political party. According to Berenson, it was "pure coincidence" that after years of involvement in Latin American leftist politics she ended up living at an MRTA safe house where guerrillas engaged in target practice and stockpiled weapons.

A hooded military tribunal, using anti-terrorism legislation enacted during a state of emergency declared by President Alberto Fujimori, sentenced her to life in prison for "treason against the fatherland"; essentially, the crime of aggravated terrorism.

Efforts to free Lori

In 1998, Amnesty International issued a press release declaring Berenson to be a political prisoner. Amnesty criticized the Peruvian anti-terrorism legislation, stating that, "it is unacceptable for hundreds of political prisoners like Berenson not to be able to exercise their basic human right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal."

On July 21, 1999, the US Congress voted on an amendment to express the sense of Congress that the U.S. should increase support to democracy and human rights activists in Peru, and that it should use all diplomatic means to get the government of Peru to release Lori Berenson, a U.S. citizen sentenced to life in prison by a military judge in 1996 for alleged terrorist acts. The vote was 189-234 against the ammendment. (1st Session of the 106th U.S. Congress, with #326. H.R. 2415.)

In early 2001, due to international pressure, her sentence was vacated and she was retried by a civilian court under the same anti-terrorism legislation. The original verdict was upheld, but on June 20, 2001, Berenson's sentence was reduced to twenty years. Under this new sentence, Berenson is not likely to go free until 2015, after which she will be deported from Peru. On June 21, a day after the re-trial verdict, U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) expressed her outrage at the conviction and sentencing and called for Berenson to be pardoned and released.

When U.S. president George W. Bush traveled to Peru in April 2002 to meet with President Alejandro Toledo, there was pressure on him to search for a humanitarian solution to Berensen's situation, but Bush's firm avowal of a "war on terrorism" left little likelihood of his arguing on behalf of a U.S. citizen accused of terrorism abroad. The Peruvian public, having endured many years of terrorist violence, has little sympathy for anyone connected to terrorism, and appears indifferent to her case.

Berenson's case was referred to the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A seven-hour hearing was held on May 7, 2004, at which her lawyers, her mother, and representatives of the Peruvian state gave evidence and argued their positions. Her defense team, led by Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general, argued that she should be released because her trials failed to meet international standards for due process, including the fact that she was tried twice for the same crime. The court is expected to rule sometime in November 2004. The decision will be binding for the government. If Peru is told to restore her rights, she could be released and expelled from the country.

Years in jail

Berenson has spent most of her nine years in Andean jails, which some claim are operated inhumanely. The Yanamayo prison where Berenson was held for several years lies at 12,000 feet (3650 m) above sea level near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru. Temperatures at Yanamayo prison are commonly below freezing, cells are not heated and windows have no glass. It is claimed that prisoners serving at Yanamayo suffer a high rate of cold-related injuries.

In 2002, Lori was moved to the maximum-security prison in Cajamarca, 350 miles (560 km) north of Lima.

See also

External links




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