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Lori and Salvador are Granted Parole!<br><br>
Dear Friends and Supporters of Lori,<br><br>
On May 25, 2010 a Peruvian judge, after carefully studying Lori's
application for what in Peru is termed "conditional liberty"
(parole), determined that Lori has earned her freedom. Lori and her
son Salvador will be leaving prison in a few days and moving to an
apartment in Lima.<br><br>
Parole requires individuals to live within the city in which they were
incarcerated (Lima, in Lori's case) - we do not know if there are
exceptions for foreigners or whether Lori will be permitted to travel to
the US while on parole. Parole in Peru is based on good behavior,
work and study. In September 2009 Lori officially filed her
application under a Peruvian law which established eligibility after
serving 75% of her 20-sentence, less time off for work and
study.<br><br>
Lori appeared before the judge in court on Monday, May 17th, for a
hearing, defended by her husband, Anibal Apari Sanchez, a Lima lawyer and
candidate for Mayor of Villa El Salvador, a suburb of Lima with over a
half million inhabitants. Lori will be a single mom - Anibal and
Lori are legally separated but remain friends and both share concerns for
Salvador's proper upbringing.<br><br>
Salvador, now an active one-year old boy, will certainly enjoy the
opportunity to run around outside the confines of the prison. He is
learning both English and Spanish but babbles continuously in
"unknown tongue." He is a very happy child and loves to
be with people.<br><br>
We want to express our gratitude to all of you for your expressions of
love and support all these years. You have truly sustained us through
some very dark hours and the dawn of a new sunny day has
arrived.<br><br>
With appreciation, always.<br><br>
Rhoda and Mark B.<br><br>
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English Website:
<a href="http://www.freelori.org /" eudora="autourl">www.freelori.org
</a> <br>
Spanish Website:
<a href="http://www.lorilibre.org/" eudora="autourl">www.lorilibre.org</a>
<br>
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</font><h1><b>Jailed U.S. citizen Berenson gets parole in
Peru</b></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=eduardo.garcia&">
Eduardo Garcia</a> and Teresa Cespedes<br>
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64O6ND20100525?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews" eudora="autourl">
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64O6ND20100525?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews<br>
<br>
</a>LIMA<br>
Tue May 25, 2010 7:29pm EDT<br><br>
LIMA (Reuters) - A Peruvian court granted parole on Tuesday to Lori
Berenson, a U.S. citizen who served 15 years of a 20-year prison sentence
in Peru for aiding leftist guerrillas during the dark days of the
country's civil war.<br><br>
She was imprisoned in 1995 after being pulled off a bus in Lima and
charged with being a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement or
MRTA, a leftist insurgency active in Peru in the 1980s and
1990s.<br><br>
Her family always maintained that she was unfairly convicted and never
took up arms during the period of social unrest in the Andean
nation.<br><br>
Lawyers for the government said they would appeal, though she is expected
to be released by Wednesday following the ruling by Judge Jessica
Leon.<br><br>
President Alan Garcia will visit President Barack Obama at the White
House in the coming days, although neither president has commented on the
case. Garcia's justice ministry has said it wants to deport Berenson, but
the court said she must check in with authorities once a month in Peru,
where she will work as a translator while pursuing a dream of opening a
bakery.<br><br>
Wrapped in a shawl with her brown hair pulled back in a long braid, a
quiet Berenson smiled and hugged her husband after court officials
announced the decision at a prison in the Chorillos neighborhood of Lima,
where she has been living with her infant son.<br><br>
"We are thrilled and so pleased that the Peruvian judge ruled that
Lori has earned her conditional liberty, as they call it in Peru,"
her mother, Rhoda Berenson, said by phone from New York. "She and
her baby can now start a new life together."<br><br>
"This decision is going to be criticized, but it was well
founded," said her husband, Anibal Apari Sanchez, a former MRTA
member who is a lawyer and represented her at the hearing. "It's
legally impossible for her to be deported."<br><br>
Berenson married Apari in 2003. Inmates in Peru are allowed conjugal
visits, though court officials said the couple's romantic relationship
has ended.<br><br>
FROM M.I.T. TO PRISON<br><br>
Berenson, 40, a New Yorker who studied at the elite Massachusetts
Institute of Technology before moving to Latin America to work as a human
rights activist, won her release a year after giving birth to a baby boy,
Salvador.<br><br>
Berenson became eligible for parole this year after serving most of her
sentence.<br><br>
Shortly after she was arrested, an anonymous military court jailed her
for life. But under pressure from the United States, a civilian court
retried her and sentenced her to 20 years.<br><br>
Berenson spent many years in a grim prison high in the Andes mountains.
She was transferred in early 2009 to the capital Lima to get healthcare
during her pregnancy.<br><br>
At the time of her arrest, Berenson was with the wife of Nestor Cerpa,
who in 1996 led a group of MRTA rebels that took hundreds of diplomats
and government officials hostage at the
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/places/japan">Japan</a>ese ambassador's
house in Lima.<br><br>
The crisis dragged on for months until then-president Alberto Fujimori
sent in commandos who had dug tunnels underneath the house. They killed
more than a dozen insurgents in a surprise raid.<br><br>
The MRTA was a small rebel group compared to the Maoist Shining Path,
which launched a brutal war against the state in 1980. Over the
subsequent two decades nearly 30,000 people died in a bloody civil
war.<br><br>
(Additional reporting by
<a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=terrywade&">
Terry Wade</a> and Marco Aquino; Editing by
<a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=philip.barbara&">
Philip Barbara</a> and
<a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=eric.walsh&">
Eric Walsh</a>)<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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