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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://popularresistance.org/us-interventionism-in-the-peruvian-justice-system/">popularresistance.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">US Interventionism In The Peruvian Justice System</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By José Carlos Llerena, People's Dispatch. - May 10, 2023<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_lhj7wozr0" alt="image.png" width="457" height="257"><br><p>Above Photo: US Ambassador Lisa Kenna with Peruvian Attorney General Patricia Benavides. Twitter.</p>
<h2>And The Coup D’Etat Against Pedro Castillo.</h2>
<p><strong> Suspicions were raised after the US Ambassador to Peru
posted a photo with Peru’s Attorney General. Peruvian activist and
jurist José Carlos Llerena Robles argues that US interventionism in the
Peruvian justice system has much deeper roots</strong></p>
<p>On April 13, US Ambassador to Peru Lisa Kenna <a href="https://twitter.com/USAmbPeru/status/1646557833142337544?s=20">posted</a>
a photo with the Peruvian Attorney General Patricia Benavides on her
personal Twitter account. She added that the two had a meeting to
discuss “the importance of moving forward with investigations of
incidents of violence and human rights cases in recent months”.</p>
<p>This tweet is further evidence to not only the <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/14/the-us-egged-on-the-coup-in-peru/">role played by the US embassy</a>
in the coup d’état against President Pedro Castillo Terrones on
December 7, 2022, but also a long history of US interventionism in the
justice system of our country. It also shows that today, in a period of
multi-polar transition, is extremely strategic for the US to take care
of its “Backyard” and give continuity to the Monroe Doctrine.</p>
<p>There is no doubt about the fundamental role played by Prosecutor
Benavides in the judicial, parliamentary, and media plot to achieve the
illegal and arbitrary detention of President Castillo. As such, the
meetings held prior to the coup d’état of December 7, 2022, as well as
the public congratulations from Ambassador Kenna, a former CIA officer
according to her public resume, to the prosecutor are no coincidence. It
is worth noting that the prosecutor’s sister is a suspect in the
organized crime case “Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto” (White Collars of
the Port).</p>
<p><a href="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/Kenna-benavides-felicito-e1683761145470.png"><img src="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/Kenna-benavides-felicito-e1683761145470.png" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="404" height="457"></a></p>
<p>However, this meddling of US hegemony in the internal affairs of the
Peruvian State is neither recent nor specific to this case. Economist
Silvio Rendón, in his book “The intervention of the United States in
Peru. From the project of the protectorate till Wikileaks”, systematizes
the Yankee interventionism in our country since the War of the Pacific,
with its modalities ranging from its military modalities to the “Human
Rights” industry. At the beginning of the year 2000, in the well-known
period of the “return to democracy”, this interventionism adopted a
different garb. Through NGOs and with USAID funding, support was given
to the “Reform of the Justice System”.</p>
<p><a href="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/USAID-PERU-LEGAL-system-e1683761215670.png"><img src="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/USAID-PERU-LEGAL-system-e1683761215670.png" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="457" height="171"></a></p>
<p>The purpose of this interventionist tactic is to guarantee control
over the design and application of the Justice System in Peru in order
to safeguard US economic, commercial and geopolitical interests in the
country. For example, USAID was in charge of the training and promotion
of the new Criminal Procedure Code, as detailed by Javier De Belaunde in
his text “The Reform of the Justice System, on the right path?”</p>
<p>As De Belaunde points out, “the new Code proposes a new model of
criminal procedure. The new law, which is accusatory, oral and public,
redefines the roles of the judges and the Public Prosecutor’s Office”.</p>
<p>In other words, the United States Agency for International
Development helped determine the procedural rules of the Peruvian
criminal process, as well as the “training” of state actors in the
process, such as the Public Prosecutor’s Office.</p>
<p>The importation of legal categories or mechanisms is also part of the
interventionism in the justice system. This not only guarantees
procedures similar to those that exist in the United States, but also
builds and feeds a consensus among legal operators about how the
American model of justice is an ideal. This happens with the Law of
Effective Collaboration, or Plea Bargaining, which today is so useful
for Lawfare schemes where the imputation of crimes of “corruption” to
progressive and leftist leaders are always based on testimonies of
“witnesses” and “effective collaborators”, rather than on evidence to
support a criminal charge. Effective Collaboration makes it possible for
Judge Moro, a ward of the US Department of Justice, to say bluntly, at
the time of sentencing President Lula Da Silva: “I have no evidence, but
I have convictions”.</p>
<p>Another manifestation of this interventionism in the justice system,
and perhaps more shamelessly, is the extension of the scope of
application of US laws to Peruvian territory. This happens, for example,
with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which turns out to be,
as Romano and Britto <a href="https://www.celag.org/ley-anticorrupcion-de-estados-unidos-y-lawfare-en-america-latina/">point out</a>,
“a legal and institutional framework that enables the
extraterritoriality of US regulations, affecting individuals, companies
and entire economies”. Precisely, this legal scheme allows the United
States to apply economic sanctions to States whose alternative projects
do not satisfy US expectations, violating any notion of sovereignty of
the peoples, or to prosecute leftist leaders for accusations of
“corruption” which in the long run are never proven but which are
effective for short-term political purposes of the Creole elites and US
imperialism.</p>
<p>In this sense, the recent meeting between the US Ambassador Kenna and
the Peruvian Public Prosecutor is nothing but another evidence of the
level of interventionism of the US imperialism that Peru has been
suffering for several years. The official communication channels show
that the US Embassy, even before Patricia Benavides took office, has had
an intimate relationship with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which
raises doubts as to whether the interests of the Peruvian people are
being prioritized in the prosecutor’s work in Peru.</p>
<p><a href="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/Fiscalia--e1683761271848.png"><img src="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/Fiscalia--e1683761271848.png" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="457" height="435"></a></p>
<p>It is enough to lift a stone in the Peruvian justice system to find
funds from the US State that seek to guarantee its geopolitical
interests instead of the effective jurisdictional protection that all
Peruvian men and women deserve. From the presence of USAID in the first
level of the Judicial Branch building, to the apparently “collaborative”
Justice Sector Support Project -managed by the ABA ROLI and funded by
the US State Department- which in 2017 developed a “<a href="https://abaroliperu.com/archivos/Manual_Evidencia_Digital.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2AXyPKgLiNEPMIuXNmixYFnNx_0e8V6x76kRUzhYfP9Sl--17_PrLwXqI">Digital Evidence Manual”</a>
for the Public Prosecutor’s Office, to the training and capacity
building of justice system operators by NGOs with funding from USAID and
NED. The meeting between the Prosecutor of the Nation and the
ambassador is only the tip of the iceberg of an affront to the
sovereignty of justice of Peru, but, at the same time, irrefutable proof
of the role of the United States in the <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/20/we-are-here-to-support-our-president-peruvians-resist-the-coup/">coup d’état against President Pedro Castillo</a> on December 7, 2022.</p>
<p><a href="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/2017-drones-peru-e1683761306115.png"><img src="https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/05/2017-drones-peru-e1683761306115.png" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="457" height="417"></a></p>
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