[News] Lori Berenson to appeal her Peruvian conviction

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Lori Berenson to appeal her Peruvian conviction before an international court
Last Best Chance
by Nicole Karsin
May 4th, 2004 10:00 AM

After almost nine years in the harsh prisons of Peru, Lori Berenson has a 
chance to win her liberty this week. The 34-year-old New Yorker's case will 
be heard in Costa Rica by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the 
highest such court for members of the Organization of American States. The 
court has a range of choices, from doing nothing to ordering Peru to set 
her free.

Berenson was originally sentenced to life in prison on terrorism charges, 
by a secret military court during the repressive regime of then president 
Alberto Fujimori. In November 1995, she was arrested as an alleged leader 
of an urban leftist guerrilla group called Tupac Amaru Revolutionary 
Movement and accused of helping to plan an attack against Peru's Congress. 
She says she was working as a journalist and had unknowingly sublet one 
floor of a house she'd once lived in to Tupac Amaru members.

In a second trial, her sentence was reduced to 20 years.

Last August, Berenson sat on the cement bed in her cell in the northern 
Peruvian province of Cajamarca and defended the nation's more than 2,000 
political prisoners. "They call them all monsters, saying that they should 
suffer," she said. "They're forgetting the fact that most people have been 
in jail for at least 10 years, with torture and families destroyed, as if 
they haven't already gone through enough."

Berenson's original charge:

Treason Against the Fatherland, or traición contra la Patria

Original sentence:

Life, or una cadena perpetua

Time in jail:

Eight years and five months in four different maximum-security prisons

Prison conditions:

 From 1996-1998, she was confined to the Yanamayo prison, on a frigid 
12,000-foot plateau.

Until 2000, she often received only a 30-minute break from her cell each day.

In 1998, she spent four months in solitary confinement in the Socobayo prison.

Health problems:

Raynaud's syndrome, a reaction to the cold and altitude that causes her 
hands and feet to become swollen and purple, the skin to get cut and infected

Chronic strep throat

Diminished eyesight because of darkness in her cell

Gastrointestinal problems because of altitude and lack of fruit and vegetables

Arthritis

International recommendations:

In July 2002, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recommended 
that Peru restore Berenson's rights, compensate her monetarily for damages, 
and overhaul the anti-terrorism laws that condemned her and thousands of 
Peruvians.

When the Peruvian government failed to comply, the commission asked the 
Inter-American court to take the case.

Passages:

In October 2003, Lori was married to Anibal Apari, a 40-year-old law 
student and former political prisoner also charged with being a Tupac Amaru 
member. He was released on parole in June 2003 after serving 12 years of a 
15-year sentence. He and Berenson met in 1997 in Yanamayo prison.

Due to testify this week is Rhoda Berenson, Lori's mother:

"If someone had told me it was going to take eight-and-a-half years to get 
an international hearing I would have said I won't survive that long. We've 
being saying what the [human rights commission] finally said, which is that 
Lori was tried twice and neither trial met any kind of international 
standards, that Lori had been imprisoned under inhumane conditions a great 
part of the time, that Peru needs to change its laws and bring them in line 
with what everybody respects as obeying international standards."

Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo:

"The anti-terrorist laws that were alive during the government of Fujimori 
have been reviewed substantially by the constitutional tribunal and we have 
been asked to redo the trial and in effect, we had to do that. In the case 
of Lori Berenson, she was given a new trial under normal circumstances 
under the current judicial system, and she has been sentenced to a much 
lower penalty. . . . She has been retried under today's circumstances with 
due process and a democratic system with respect to human rights."

Former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, who will help represent her 
before the Inter-American court:

"The integrity of the Peruvian judicial system is at stake, as well as the 
question of freedom and justice for Lori Berenson."

Thomas Nooter, another Berenson lawyer:

"It is really Lori's last chance to get a judicial resolution for her case. 
There are no other courts to go to after this. I'm optimistic that the 
court will grant some kind of release to Lori. They could order her to be 
released or they could order a new trial, which is better than nothing."


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