On November 30, 1995, Lori Berenson, an American citizen, was arrested while riding on a bus in downtown Lima, Peru. She was charged with treason against the state of Peru—a legal absurdity, since Lori is not a citizen of Peru—but charging her with treason enabled Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to have Lori tried before a military tribunal, where conviction is virtually guaranteed, rather than in a civilian court.
To no one's surprise, the military tribunal did indeed convict Lori. The conviction rate of the military court is nearly 100 percent, for reasons easily understood: the accused is not allowed to examine the "evidence" upon which the charges are based; the accused is not afforded an opportunity to rebut either evidence or witnesses who testify against her; and the accused is systematically deprived of the right to present exculpatory evidence of her own.
In essence, the "judge" (who remained hooded throughout the travesty of a trial) reads the file that is presented by the prosecution, inevitably finds the accused guilty, since the tribunal is not a forum where other options are allowed to be presented, and pronounces sentence—which is to say, he finds the accused guilty to one degree or another. (The law was changed in 1998: military tribunals would still be secret; it is still not necessary for evidence to be shown to the public; but the judges are no longer hooded. Finally, there is accountability in these military courts. But it is still not necessary that judges be lawyers or have military training. The current composition of the 10-man military supreme court has five military officers with legal training (lawyers) and five with no legal training.)
As a gun was held to her head by a hooded soldier, 26-year-old Lori Berenson learned that her fate was to spend the rest of her life in a maximum prison without the possibility of parole.
Lori was in Peru as a journalist. She was writing articles on the effects of poverty on women in Peru for two New York publications, Modern Times and Third World Viewpoint. The editors of both magazines verified, in writing, to the investigating officials that she was, indeed, working for them. The Peruvian government approved Lori's credentials and declared them legitimate, but now, having falsely convicted her, claims they were fakes. Peru claims that Lori was actually not merely a member of a terrorist group—the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA—but, preposterously, a leader of that group. This is how Peru tries to justify its mind-bogglingly outrageous decision to charge Lori with treason and thereby strip her of her right to due process.
By accusing Lori of being a terrorist, the Peruvian government succeeded in portraying her innocent, open and above-board visits with members of the Peruvian congress, whom she interviewed for her articles, as terrorist scouting missions—despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that she asked questions that could by any stretch of the imagination have been of use to any opposition group, terrorist or otherwise, and abundant evidence to suggest that she was merely doing exactly what the Peruvian government had said she had a right to: working as a journalist.
While Lori may or may not have been interviewing members of the MRTA for her articles—the facts are unclear—she has never been a member of that group and no actual evidence that she is or was a member has ever been presented*. She has consistently and repeatedly denounced violence of any sort, and she has steadfastly maintained her absolute innocence of all the charges that were brought against her.
Indeed, all the alleged ties the Peruvian government has labored to establish between Lori and the MRTA fall apart on even the most cursory of examinations. A sampling of the most frequently cited connections between Lori and the MRTA, and the truth about them, follows:
Lori lived in an apartment far from this house. She was never a tenant of the safe house used by the MRTA. Her name appears nowhere on the house's lease. (Lori's lawyer has seen the lease and verified this fact.)
Lori was arrested on 30 November 1995 while riding a bus in downtown Lima. There was a firefight between MRTA rebels and Peruvian police in a wealthy Lima suburb later that night, but by that time, Lori had already been in police custody for several hours.
The Peruvian authorities found out that Lori had a bank account with roughly fifty thousand dollars in it and leapt to the conclusion, based on absolutely no other evidence, that it was a weapons fund. (A conclusion possible only if one had already decided that Lori was a terrorist.) If the Peruvian authorities had expended even a minimal effort, they would have discovered that this was Lori's college money, in a trust fund shared with her mother, Rhoda; and that it came from royalties on a statistics textbook Lori's father, Mark, had written. (Peru has since quietly backed away from this (even by Peruvian standards) insupportable accusation.)
Both Interpol and Ecuador have said that this story was fed to the press by the Peruvian authorities. Gonzalo Salvador, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Ecuadorian Embassy, said, "If our authorities had known about such a meeting, they would've apprehended them. I believe this story was invented in Peru."
In short, every connection the Peruvian government attempted to make between Lori and the MRTA turned out to be false and could easily have been refuted and proven to be absolute hogwash if Lori had been given her day in court and a chance to defend herself.
A civilian trial would have afforded such an opportunity. But for reasons one can only speculate about, the Peruvian government—especially Peru's autocratic leader, Alberto Fujimori—wanted to ensure that Lori would be convicted. Fujimori may have wanted to show the Peruvian people that he is willing to stand up to the United States—to prove that he has no fear of the American government. Taking a tough stance against the "American terrorist" may have been the gambit he decided on. (A pretty safe one, as it turns out, since the American government has done so little to help, and seems so little concerned that one of its citizens is being illegally held in conditions that human rights organizations have called harsh, inhumane and degrading—amounting to the very torture that Lori herself maintains she has never been subjected to.)
Thus, Fujimori, who, after Lori's arrest, immediately went on television and unequivocally pronounced her guilty, had a vested interest in ensuring that this innocent American citizen be found guilty despite the lack of evidence. It should be noted—even Lori's own family openly admits this fact—that most Peruvians think Lori is guilty; this is only to be expected since the Peruvian press and the media in general is tightly controlled by the government and intimidated into toeing the government line. The overwhelming evidence of Lori's innocence has never been seen or even hinted at in the Peruvian press. Under these circumstances, Fujimori's tough stance against "Lori the American terrorist" is quite popular with the Peruvian people. It would be surprising, given the situation in Peru, to find a Peruvian who did not think Lori guilty and deserving of her harsh fate.
There are a few, though, including the former Prime Minister of Peru, Javier Valle Riestra, who believe Lori is certainly not guilty of the charges against her. In June 1998, Javier Valle Riestra, a respected constitutional lawyer, went so far as to opine publicly that Lori should be pardoned and deported from Peru because of the gross lack of fairness and contempt for due process of her "trial". Fujimori absolutely refused, and continues to refuse, to entertain any such possibility. Valle Riestra has since resigned his post at least in part in protest over Fujimori's dictatorial style and unwillingness to give up the presidency despite having already served the constitutionally-allowed maximum of two terms. (Fujimori is running for a third term this year, as Valle Riestra feared he would; Fujimori's contempt for the rule of law is not confined to international law—he treats the laws of his own country with equal contempt.)
Since 1996, Rhoda and Mark Berenson have been fighting an uphill battle to get their innocent daughter freed. The obstacles that remain in their way are many, not the least of which has been the first impression that both Americans and Peruvians had of Lori. This impression was the result of a carefully orchestrated media event, controlled and manipulated from the start by the Peruvian government. Fujimori wanted to insure that the impression of Lori would be that of a maniacal, unrepentant terrorist, and the diabolical way in which he went about guaranteeing that first—and, for the Peruvians, only—impression of Lori could serve as a textbook case study in how to create and disseminate effective large-scale propaganda—an ingenious and instructive example of how a government constructs and sends forth The Big Lie:
For four weeks after her arrest, Lori was basically held incommunicado alone in a closet-like cell. On Dec. 28, 1995, she was moved to a small, dark, rat-infested cell, shared with another woman. Lori herself was never physically abused during that time but the same cannot be said for Lori's cellmate of eleven days. Lori's cellmate had been shot numerous times and was still bleeding from her wounds. She had a colostomy bag that was overflowing with waste, as well as a catheter that Lori, who has no medical training, had to try to re-insert every time it fell out. The woman had obviously been tortured. The woman was never given or even offered any medical treatment during the whole eleven days that Lori was with her. Lori and Lori alone took care of this woman.
At the end of this terrifying and heart-rending ordeal, Lori, who had not been allowed to shower or change clothes during these eleven days, was told she was to be "presented" to the press. She was told there would be no microphones on the stage, and that she would have to shout if she expected to be heard. That is exactly what she did—and that is precisely why she looked and sounded, for all the world, exactly like what Fujimori wanted her to: a wild-eyed, screaming, maniacal criminal.
Outraged at the treatment of the wounded woman, Lori gave a statement in anger (understandably, considering the circumstances), but that did not even begin to approximate the "admission of guilt" the Peruvian government claimed it to be.
Her statement in full (translated from Spanish):
I am to be condemned for my concern about the conditions of hunger and misery which exists in this country. Here nobody can deny that in Peru there is much injustice. There is an institutionalized violence that has killed the people's finest sons and has condemned children to die of hunger. If it is a crime to worry about the subhuman conditions in which the majority of this population lives, then I will accept my punishment. But this is not a love of violence. This is not to be a criminal terrorist because in the MRTA there are no criminal terrorists. It is a revolutionary movement.
I love this nation's people. I love this nation's people and although this love is going to make—cost—me years in prison, I will never stop loving, and never will lose the hope and confidence that there will be a new day of justice in Peru.
What is remarkable about this statement, considering the horrors Lori endured before she gave it, is its relative restraint. But this carefully orchestrated image of Lori—dirty, disheveled, mouth twisted in outrage at what she had witnessed and what she had endured, defiantly "admitting" her crimes—is, to this day, the only image of Lori Berenson that the Peruvian populace has been allowed to see. Fujimori has seen to it that Lori's statement has never been allowed to be seen in its proper and relevant context. Is it any wonder Peruvians view Lori as having received her just desserts? (It was this evidence of Lori's supposed "lack of remorse" for crimes she did not commit and her refusal to plead for mercy that convinced the tribunal "justice" to convict her and impose upon her the maximum sentence of life without parole.)
Moreover, this was the original image of Lori that was presented in the American press, as well. It is the image of Lori that Rhoda and Mark Berenson have, for over four years, been laboring to overcome. For the mainstream American press was all too willing to accept the Peruvian government's framing of the case and its framing (in both senses of the word) of Lori. Rhoda and Mark Berenson have been forced into a situation in which they first must try to undo the damage that was done by this false image of their daughter and replace that image with the true image of the loving, concerned and thoughtful daughter who went to Peru out of a genuine desire to help the poor and oppressed. It has not been easy for them: that original image of Lori went out on the national news, all at once. Mark and Rhoda have been fighting back piecemeal, as best they can: an article here, a mention on a news program there. But the Big Lie orchestrated by Fujimori has had the advantages of both an almost insurmountable head start and a more coordinated and synchronized media push. The American media that aided in perpetrating and perpetuating this myth of Lori-the-terrorist has been less-than-eager to undo the damage it has done and continues to do. When the Berensons try to interest the American media in the true story of their daughter, they are met with a reluctance on the part of the media unless Lori can be interviewed. Fujimori categorically refuses to allow this to happen—Lori is allowed no contact with the media. The end result is that the mainstream media is still allowing Fujimori to dictate the agenda on how Lori is depicted in her own country as well as in Peru.
The US government drags its feet; the mainstream American media is bafflingly uninterested in correcting the false image of Lori that it helped create. That is why Rhoda and Mark Berenson are trying to bring their appeal for help directly to all of the people who are concerned with justice and human rights.
Years of imprisonment in an Andean hell-hole, a maximum security prison situated at more than 12,000 feet above sea-level, have left Lori with arthritis, vision problems, and circulatory problems that, despite Lori's having recently been moved to a prison situated at a less health-endangering height of 7,600 feet above sea-level, refuse to go away. Lori's swollen and cut hands are twisted and purple-tinted as a result of her circulatory problems. She sleeps in a cell with no running water and an open hole in the floor for a toilet. At night, the temperatures routinely drop below freezing; there is, needless to say, no heat in Lori's cell. Lori, however, never complains about herself; but she remains a tireless advocate for the human rights of her fellow inmates whom she considers worse off than she.
This is how Lori lives; the knowledge that this is what their innocent daughter is being subjected to every day is a pain that the Berenson family lives with constantly. President Clinton does not care; Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), who led the fight to defeat the congressional resolution calling for Lori's release, does not care. (When the Berensons, understandably distressed at Smith's inexplicably callousness, asked to meet with him, they were told that he would first need to acquaint himself with the facts of Lori's case. Incredibly, Smith led the charge to defeat a resolution demanding the release of an American citizen being held illegally and in inhumane conditions while not knowing, by his own admission to Lori's family, the facts of the case. It must be a cruel and ironic Fate that made Smith the Chairman of the Congressional Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights—for his shameful behavior in Lori's case makes it difficult to believe that it was a an actual concern for human rights that garnered him this plum chairmanship.)
They do not care. It is our job as caring people to make them care.
The United States Code 22 Section 1732 states quite clearly that the President is obliged to do all within his power short of a declaration of war to secure the release of an American citizen being unjustly detained by a foreign power. Amnesty International, the UN, the Organization of American States—these are just a few of the many international organizations who, having looked at the facts, agree that Lori was deprived of even the appearance of due process, and ought, at the very least, to be granted a fair trial, if not released outright for humanitarian reasons. But so far—despite the pleas of Lori's parents and family; despite the pleas of Lori's many supporters (including myself); despite the pleas of nearly half the members of House of Representatives and a third of the members of the Senate— President Clinton has done virtually nothing to secure the release of the only known American political prisoner being unjustly detained by a foreign power. In fact, foreign aid to Fujimori's dictatorship continues to flow from D.C. coffers at an alarming rate. The United States is, in effect, subsidizing Peru's illegal detention of one of its own citizens.
The Berenson family and, indeed, all of Lori's supporters hope that every person of conscience will pitch in to help them in their grassroots effort to get President Clinton to put pressure on Fujimori to release Lori. Four years of unjust imprisonment is four years too long. The time to act is now, before the changes in government in both D.C. and Lima occur. The Berensons have labored hard and long to cultivate contacts and sympathetic ears where they could in both governments. They should not have to look forward to the prospect of possibly having to start over from scratch when administrations in the U.S. and Peru change. This wrongful situation occurred under the watch of William Jefferson Clinton; he is obligated as President of the United States to secure her release. It must be done now.
Please write the President and your representatives in the House and the Senate and ask them to act now to free Lori.
And learn the facts of Lori's case at the Berensons' web site, www.freelori.org.
But when Cerpa issued the list, he identified it as one that was calling for the release of "MRTA prisoners, as well as those prisoners falsely accused by the government of being MRTA militants" [my emphasis]. Lori appeared on the list because she had been falsely accused. By the time the list was cut from over 400 names to 20, Cerpa was demanding the release only of those he felt Fujimori could have no legitimate reason to object to freeing. Cerpa felt, according to ex-hostages, that getting the innocent American released might win the American public over to the MRTA's cause.
Thus has the Peruvian government perversely turned an incident that should properly be seen as one that exculpates Lori into one that "proves" her guilt (or actually, her "guilt-by-association", though it fails even to do that).
The Berensons convincingly refute the Peruvian FAQ point-by-point on their web site.
By committing flagrant and undeniable fraud to "win" the last presidential election, Peru's Alberto Fujimori managed, also, to isolate himself even further from the international community, which has been demanding for some time that he take genuine, measurable actions to re-establish recognizable democratic processes and institutions in Peru. It seems now that Fujimori may be using an innocent American citizen being held hostage in his country as a pawn in his game to trick the United States and others in the international community into thinking he is moving away from dictatorship. Fujimori's ploy is unconvincing.
On August 28, one month after 221 Representatives and 43 Senators sent letters to President Clinton asking him to secure US citizen Lori Berenson's release immediately, the Supreme Military Council of Peru conceded that Lori was not guilty of the charges of aggravated terrorism and treason against Peru. Lori has already served nearly 5 years of her life sentence.
Lori was convicted in 1996. She was not tried--merely convicted and sentenced in a travesty of due process that has, rightly, been universally condemned. Prevented from seeing the "evidence" against her, she was refused her right to mount a defense of any kind.
Since that time, Lori's parents, Rhoda and Mark Berenson, along with thousands of Lori's supporters, have tirelessly lobbied for Lori's release. Overwhelming evidence of Lori's innocence has always existed. Fujimori has always insisted that he would never allow her case to be reviewed; never allow her to be retried; never, ever release her. Indeed, while Fujimori was carrying out his election fraud this past Spring, his opponent, Alejandro Toledo, said he might be willing to look again at Lori's case--merely look at it. Fujimori successfully depicted Toldeo's stance as tantamount to being soft on terrorism.
The reason Fujimori was successful is that there is no freedom of the press in Peru--to this day, no one in Peru has ever heard the truth about Lori; Peruvians do not--could not--know how diabolically she has been framed. The absence of the right to free speech means that even if a Peruvian journalist were inclined to tell Lori's story, Fujimori would not allowed it. Years of relentless propaganda have made even the mention of justice for Lori a losing political proposition in Peru.
Over the past five years, Peru's press, top government officials, and Fujimori himself have all repeatedly and falsely condemned Lori publicly. Fujimori continues to do so; he has already said he expects the judge "trying" Lori to find her guilty and impose a sentence of comparable harshness to the one under which Lori now suffers. Lori's fate will be in the hands of this political appointee who owes his station to Fujimori; once again she will be denied a trial by a jury of her peers.
Since first taking office in the early 1990s, Fujimori has consistently eroded all democratic institutions in Peru; many are gone entirely; those that remain are merely facades behind which the autocratic hand of Fujimori, manipulating things to his own advantage, can easily be seen. His stealing of the latest election seems to be the last straw for the rest of the civilized world. That is why he has backed down on the issue of allowing a new trial for Lori.
But is this offer a meaningful one?
Here is the "presumption of innocence" Lori can expect in this new, "fair" trial: For going on five years, Peruvians have heard nothing but unchallenged briefs for the prosecution coming from the press and from the highest levels of the government. They are unaware that a defense--a convincing defense--for Lori even exists. Lori was convicted in the first "trial" precisely because she was prevented from answering the charges against her. Now, having created a climate in which Lori could not possibly get a fair hearing, the Peruvian government has conceded that her first trial was unfair, and has granted her a new "trial".
A blatantly unfair second trial is no solution. A fair trial is what Lori deserved--and had a right to--over 4 years ago. That would have been due process then. Today due process demands that Lori, having been illegally held without trial for five years, be released--not retried in a setting virtually guaranteeing conviction; not put through a show trial in which the cards are yet again stacked against her. If Fujimori wants to make a genuine gesture showing his intent to move away from autocracy and toward democracy, he must release Lori now.
On Wednesday, August 30, on Oprah, America saw the tears in the eyes of Lori's parents, Rhoda and Mark Berenson. They have shed tears for five long years that nobody was there to see. They fought through those tears to get to this pass. It is imperative that all of us now stand with them and work to bring their daughter home. We can help make the next tears shed by Rhoda and Mark tears of joy as they hold Lori in their arms.
Please write or call your Senators and Representatives; ask them to keep the pressure on President Clinton to push for Lori's release. Write or call the President directly and ask that he get Lori home. Activism of this kind is what has gotten us this far. We must keep pushing until Lori is released. Fujimori has held Lori hostage for five long years.
She is innocent. She must be released now. Find out what else you can do at www.freelori.org.
When I heard that The Nation was featuring a cover story on the Lori Berenson case, I quickly went to their web site hoping the full-text of the story would be there. It was! What luck! Before even reading the article, I e-mailed it to some friends. I am a supporter of Lori, but I am also a long-time Nation reader; and as certain as I am that Lori is innocent, I was equally certain that The Nation would do a fair story; The Nation would not fail to tell the story from which the mainstream media shied away; for the mainstream media, to this day, rely heavily on the fabrications about Lori that the Peruvian government has promulgated since Lori was first arrested.
After I read the story, I was appalled and immediately sent another e-mail to my friends apologizing profusely for having sent them this hatchet job. I am aghast at my own naivete; I really thought The Nation's integrity could be taken on faith. I have learned otherwise, and learned it the hard way.
By weaving a seemingly coherent whole out of innocent facts that are not in dispute, joined unnaturally to "factual" assertions taken from documents whose probity and provenance cannot be vouched for--documents whose assertions are ardently, categorically, and vociferously disputed and denied from start to finish by Lori, her lawyer Ramsey Clark, and Lori's parents--Levi and Mineo make their case that, while Lori is probably not guilty of being a leader of the MRTA, she may very well be guilty of something, though they seem unsure exactly what that might be. Perhaps they mean to entertain suggestions?
To imply guilt of any sort based on such "documentary" evidence is the height of irresponsible journalism; Levi and Mineo insinuate that the charges Lori was tried upon were grounded in some sort of wrong-doing on her part and that the charges just somehow got pumped up on steroids along the way. This is really just perpetuating the Peruvian government's methodology on a smaller scale. This article is not the truth about Lori Berenson any more than the original charges against her reflected the truth; Levi and Mineo's article merely embodies a kinder, gentler calumny. Isn't it time we stopped allowing Lori to be pilloried this way? What's next? Will The Nation re-examine The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and proclaim that, while it doesn't prove the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy, recent supplementary neo-Nazi documents tend to prove the existence of smaller-scale Jewish plots? And why not? The Protocols and other racist literature are of roughly the same reliability as the documents Levi and Mineo used to condemn Lori Berenson.
Lori was "convicted" by the first tribunal nearly five years ago because the Peruvian government used secret--and false--evidence that Lori and her lawyers were never given a chance to see, much less rebut. Now, the Peruvian government releases equally suspect secret documents, and Levi and Mineo--having evidently learned nothing from the Peruvian government's tactics the first time around--swallow most of these accusations whole and regurgitate them in The Nation, a magazine that used to be able to pride itself on its healthy skepticism toward official sources and its progressive bona fides.
Lori Berenson was innocent of the charges brought against her five years ago; she is innocent of any supposedly lesser charges that any Peruvian civilian court might bring against her today or in the future. If Fujimori wanted to charge Lori fairly with anything, he should have done so five years ago; instead he chose to charge her with the absurd crime of treason. The Peruvian Supreme Military Justice Commission has now, in essence, admitted that that charge and that venue (i.e., military court) were wrong.
Due process demands that the accused be granted a fair trial speedily. Lori Berenson was, in essence, held hostage for nearly five years before the Peruvian government agreed to even the semblance of this basic right. The Peruvian government is not entitled to take five years to bring their case. The right to a speedy trial is just that: a right, not a privilege. If the Peruvian government ever had the right to try Lori, they lost it long ago.
This is in no way the same as saying that Lori should be let off on a "technicality". (Can a right as basic as due process seriously be construed as a technicality?) Lori's right to a speedy trial was stolen from her--that is a fact. But she is also entitled to a fair trial. In Peru, where she has been vilified as a terrorist for five years by a press that is under the thumb of Alberto Fujimori; where top government officials routinely denounce her publicly as "the American terrorist"; where, to this day, not one shred of the overwhelming evidence of Lori's innocence has been allowed to reach the Peruvian people--tell me, where in this Peru can Lori expect to receive a fair trial? She will be judged and sentenced by a political appointee who will have to answer to the well-known wrath of Alberto Fujimori--is this the setting for a fair trial?
To the Peruvian public, Lori is guilty--that is merely a given, unquestioned, already proved. When Alejandro Toledo ran against Fujimori last Spring and made a passing comment about being willing to look into the Lori's case--merely look into the case--Fujimori was able successfully to depict this as tantamount to being soft on terrorism. That is how certain the Peruvian public, fed a steady diet of Fujimori's lies for five years, is that Lori Berenson is guilty. Fujimori has already declared that he expects the judge to find Lori guilty and to make her "new" sentence equivalent in harshness to the original one.
That is the "presumption of innocence" from which Lori would be starting in a new, "fair" civilian trial in Peru.
Fujimori has had five years to torture Lori Berenson and her family; that is five more than he should have had. That The Nation published an article suggesting that it would not be out of line for Peru to try her again on "lesser charges" rather than publishing editorials clamoring for her unconditional release is something that will forever redound to The Nation's shame. I know I for one am ashamed for you on this issue.
That Levi and Mineo could write an article like "The Lori Berenson Papers"; that they could end that article with the unspeakably noxious and utterly unsupported implication that Lori is somehow enjoying the "grandeur" of being held prisoner in a cold, dangerous, unsanitary, and inhuman Peruvian dungeon--that they could do this and then turn around and leave a voice mail for Lori's parents, Rhoda and Mark Berenson, congratulating them on Lori's being granted a chance at a "real" trial (one in which the cards would again be stacked in such a way that conviction would be a virtual certainty) is something that will forever redound to their personal shame--though it is difficult to believe that anyone who could write an article such as this could ever feel something as quaint--yet acutely human--as shame.
Levi and Mineo apparently have no appreciation of the damage an article such as theirs may have done, especially coming at this critical juncture. That it was published in The Nation, a magazine that ought to be rallying to the cause of freeing Lori Berenson only makes it all the more damaging. Does it not bother you that the damage you have done may very well be impossible to undo, even with the collective effort of the thousands of us who spend every waking moment trying to secure Lori's release? Does it not bother you that Lori may well spend even more time in that Peruvian dungeon because of your callousness? Do you feel no compunction that Lori's family's suffering might now continue unnecessarily because of the choice you made to publish this article at this time?
Is it worth it for me to even attempt to appeal to your conscience? It ought to be--why would you espouse progressive causes and yet not care about individual people? I hope The Nation will, in the near future, make an effort to join those of us who are working to bring about Lori's release, not set that worthy and attainable cause back any further.
Over five and a half years ago, Alberto Fujimori - at the time President of Peru - went on national TV in Peru waving Lori Berenson's passport and claiming she was an MRTA terrorist. The evidence he cited then and over the course of the succeeding months and years has been refuted wholesale, shown, down to the very last charge, to be either lies, exaggerations, half-truths, or wholly irrelevant.
Examples of each:
A lie: That Lori was a leader of the MRTA. The Peruvian government itself has admitted that this absurdity is a lie, and they always knew it to be one. This is why Lori was granted a new (though hardly more fair) "trial" - because this lie, on the basis of which she was sent to prison, was no longer sustainable; the government , however, still wants her behind bars.
An Exaggeration: That Lori lived with the MRTA terrorists. Lori lived for a while in the same boarding house as some people who were members of the MRTA, though she did not know of their political affiliation. At the time of her arrest, she was no longer living in that boarding house. Claiming she "lived with" the MRTA, though, would be the equivalent of saying you "live with" the people in the apartment next to you; and that if they were engaged in, say, selling drugs illegally, you, too, are culpable for their acts because it is not possible that you could not have known of their illegal activities.
A Half-Truth: To this day, in the media, you will read or hear that when the MRTA raided the Japanese embassy in Peru (at which time Lori was already in prison), Nestor Cerpa, the leader of the group, listed in his demands that Lori Berenson be released from prison. This is true. As negotiations wore on, news sources will tell you, Cerpa whittled the list of people whose release he demanded down to a smaller number; Lori's name was still on the smaller list. This, also, is true. Here is where media accounts of this episode typically end, leaving the reader no choice but to deduce that Lori must be a member of the MRTA - otherwise, why would Cerpa demand her release?
Of course, we know why Cerpa demanded her release: his list of those he wanted released included imprisoned members of the MRTA...and those falsely accused of being members. He designated Lori Berenson one of the latter. He had hoped to gain the good will of the people of the US by standing up for one of our own citizens who had been falsely imprisoned. This tactic, of course, did not gain him or his group any sympathy in the US, at least in part because the US media always left this part out, leaving the false impression that Cerpa's intent was to acknowledge Lori's membership in the MRTA.
An Irrelevancy: That Lori worked as a translator in the peace negotiations in El Salvador in the early 1990s. This fact is frequently adduced, but how Lori's entirely legal and above-board involvement in aiding the peace process in El Salvador is relevant to absurd charges of "terrorist activity" in Peru is never explained: this is a guilt by association tactic, but the actual association established is Lori's nonviolent involvement in the procurement of peace. So this is not merely irrelevant, it is self-refuting.
Nevertheless, it was claimed that Lori was involved in a "plot to attack the Peruvian Congress", with the goal, it is averred, of taking hostages and making demands. The evidence that any such plot even existed is paper thin: the MRTA's allegedly being in possession of information that was easily obtainable from any number of public sources, including any Peruvian newspaper, for instance, was put forth as evidence that the gathering of "secret" intelligence was going on. This information - Congressional seating charts, for example - was neither secret nor particularly intelligent; it was merely public record.
It is not exactly indisputable that the MRTA was even in possession of such "intelligence" since all of the "evidence" was released after first passing through the hands of Fujimori's chief torturer and propagandist, Vladimiro Montesinos. Montesinos, it has been revealed subsequent to his losing power and fleeing Peru as a fugitive, did Richard Nixon one better by keeping a pretty complete video diary - sound and pictures - of his extensive illegalities over the past decade: illegalities that included the routine manufacturing of evidence against political enemies and the use of bribery and extortion to compel cooperation from unwilling "collaborators".
So the "evidence" that there was such a plot against Congress at all is far from proved. The chain of evidence is vitiated by the intimate involvement of this known criminal, Vladimiro Montesinos - a liar, a torturer, a blackmailer, a cold-blooded killer. Even the government of Peru now calls him a fugitive criminal.
But let us for the sake of argument assume that the evidence of an MRTA plot against Congress is solid and an established fact.
Still, there is no evidence - and I mean none - that Lori Berenson was in any way involved in this alleged plot. Thankfully, among the videos Montesinos left behind after his cowardly flight from justice was at least one showing him discussing how to manipulate the Lori Berenson case to his and Fujimori's political advantage. Make no mistake: this is what Lori's case has always been about: the political careers of Fujimori and Montesinos. It has never been about Lori Berenson or anything as pedestrian as actual guilt or innocence. At Lori's first "trial", she was not even allowed the luxury of mounting a defense! A guilty verdict was assured from the day Fujimori went on TV and demanded it, which he immediately did after Lori was arrested.
To support my contention that Lori's case has never been about establishing actual guilt or innocence, let us look a little closer at the accusation - that Lori was guilty of conspiring to mount an assault on Congress.
I am sure most reasonable people would agree that such an offense should be a crime, and anyone guilty of mounting such an assault, or conspiring to, ought to be duly charged with that crime and given his or her day in court. And I agree with this position.
But that's not the way it always worked in Peru in the 1990s. In fact, for some people, launching an armed attack on Congress proved to be a valuable career move, a shortcut to politial advancement and additional power. Fujimori's claim that he was rushing to defend the threatened integrity of the Peruvian Congress should have been sufficient to prove that the charges against Lori were false, ludicrously so. For, though there is little believable evidence that the MRTA (of which Lori was never a member anyway) was planning to attack Congress, there is overwhelming - indeed, irrefutable - evidence that somebody else not only planned an attack on Congress, but actually carried it out and personally benefited from his conspiracy.
That person?
Alberto Fujimori himself.
This is not a matter of conjecture, but a matter of historical fact, not seriously disputed by anyone. In 1992, Fujimori, having been President of Peru for 2 years, decided that the democratic process and form of government that was in place in Peru was not to his liking. He wanted dictatorial power, and so, after first assuring himself of the backing of the Peruvian military, he simply attacked the Congress; took it over; arrested his political rivals; and arrogated to himself the power that had formerly been Congress's (along with many other authoritarian powers).
Again, this is a straightforward recitation of the facts of that 1992 event. It is not a conspiracy theory; not a politically-motivated lie - but an objective and verifiable historical fact, recognized as such by all.
The evidence that this attack on Congress happened is irrefutable; the evidence that many, including Montesinos, were involved in this conspiracy has been established and acknowledged.
How many military tribunals did Fujimori and Montesinos face as a result of this crime of (to employ the absurdly-worded charge they used against Lori Berenson in 1995) "treason against the fatherland"?
None.
How many days did either of these criminals spend in a hell-hole 12,700 feet above sea level?
None.
Were they daily pilloried in the Peruvian press, as Lori was after Fujimori accused her of terrorism?
Fujimori established an autocrat's control over the media after this coup; knowing that, I'm sure all of you can figure out the answer to that question yourselves.
Well, then, what did happen to Fujimori and Montesinos after this "self-coup"? (The media absurdly chooses to refer to this treasonous act of Fujimori's as a "self-coup", as though he were its target and carrying it out somehow cost him power, when, in fact, the exact opposite is true.)
Fujimori and Montesinos both benefited directly and substantially from their assault on a democratic institution. They planned and carried out the attack, and they made sure they were rewarded handsomely for their successful efforts.
In 1992, Fujimori ended any pretense of a democratic form of government in Peru by actually - not allegedly, but in actual fact - mounting a treasonous assault against Congress and usurping the power of the branch of government whose ostensible purpose is to represent the people. From that time on, Fujimori and Montesinos were, respectively, the public face and the behind-the-scenes string-puller of an autocratic and increasingly terrorist government. It was this terrorist government that, absurdly, accused Lori Berenson of terrorism.
Yes, a terrorist government. According to Amnesty International, even the blood-thirsty Peruvian terrorist group Shining Path comes in second to the Peruvian government when it comes to indiscriminate killing: the government was responsible for 53% of it, while the Shining Path was responsible for roughly 46%. (It is worth mentioning that Amnesty International estimates that the MRTA, which Fujimori and Montesinos intended to "smash" by falsely accusing Lori Berenson, was responsible for about 1% of the killing.)
These are the men - Fujimori and Montesinos - who came to the "defense" of Congress less than 4 years later when they accused the MRTA of planning to attack it, and accused Lori of being part of that plan.
I don't know about you, but as for me, if Sammy "the Bull" Gravano were to point to someone on the street and exclaim in an outraged voice: "That guy's a vicious killer! Arrest him!!"...I'd be more than a little suspicious.
I have to admit to a similar prejudice in my attitude toward Fujimori's claim to be "protecting" the integrity of a Congress that he himself had attacked less than 4 years previously, and that he and his torturer Montesinos made efforts to keep tractable subsequently by employing a scheme of massive bribery and extortion. (We have Vladimiro "Richard Milhous" Montesinos's video library of criminal activity to thank for establishing as indisputable fact this long-standing tactic of bribing and coercing Congressmen.)
Should attacking a democratic institution (or planning to) be a crime? Of course. But let's prosecute the men we know for a fact did it, not the woman we know did no such thing.
Why was Lori Berenson thrown in jail 5 and a half years ago for a crime she did not commit? And why were Montesinos and Fujimori allowed to rule Peru for an additional 9 years after committing the very crime they falsely accused Lori of having plotted to commit? Why is Lori Berenson on trial in Peru at this very moment, while the murderous criminals Fujimori and Montesinos live in luxuriously comfortable exile? How many illegal trials will Lori - and her family - be forced to suffer through while Fujimori and Montesinos remain free and far from the judicial dock? Why is the "evidence" that these two liars and murderers fabricated against Lori still being accepted as sound in a Peruvian court of law?
I have concentrated for the most part here on this one instance of massive hypocrisy and political manipulation on the parts of Fujimori and Montesinos. I encourage everyone to look more deeply into Lori's situation: you'll find that the case against her is riddled with similar lies, inaccuracies and unsustainable politically-motivated accusations. A good place to start your research: www.freelori.org.
Addressing a gathering of Lori's supporters a year and a half ago, journalist Amy Goodman quoted the former boxer, Rubin Carter - himself the victim of a false accusation, but subsequently cleared - in a speech he gave before the United Nations: "It was hate that put me in jail; it was love that set me free." Love, Goodman continued, would be what frees Lori, too.
I agree with this. Love will play a big part. But I also think that what will free Lori is the truth. Rhoda Berenson's book, Lori: My Daughter, Wrongfully Imprisoned in Peru, is an attempt to get the truth out there, to combat the lies that continue to be repeated about her daughter. Buy the book; read it; learn from it. Get involved! As Mark Twain said, lies make it three times round the world before the truth even has a chance to put its boots on. That is certainly the case with Lori's situation. And even when we successfully refute a lie, that does not stop it from appearing, yet again, in media coverage of the Lori Berenson case. We kill these lies, but they won't stay dead; they rise again from their graves.
Help kill the lies permanently and let the truth reign. If we succeed in accomplishing this, Lori will be free.
Release date: 2004-09-20
Whenever it is made known to the President that any citizen of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen, and if the release so demanded is unreasonably delayed or refused, the President shall use such means, not amounting to acts of war and not otherwise prohibited by law, as he may think necessary and proper to obtain or effectuate the release; and all the facts and proceedings relative thereto shall as soon as practicable be communicated by the President to Congress. § 1732. Release of citizens imprisoned by foreign governments