President Alan García swore in the new director of Peru’s national police today. Gen. Octavio Salazar replaces Gen. David Rodríguez amid a growing drug trade connected to remnants of Shining Path guerrillas.
Before his promotion, Salazar was the head of Lima’s Seventh Police Division.
During the ceremony, García stressed the importance of fighting corruption and Peru’s growing […]

The only survivor of the Barrios Altos massacre testified today at the human rights trial of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori. Tomás Livia Ortega was paralyzed when the Colina group death squad killed 15 people, including his wife, during a barbecue in a tenement in Lima’s Barrios Altos district in 1991.
According to Agencia Andina, Livia testified […]

An Italian judge has issued an arrest warrant for Peru’s former president, General Francisco Morales-Bermúdez, for the disappearance of 25 Italian citizens in the 1970s. The warrant was issued by Judge Luisianna Figliolia on Monday. Peru’s ex-Prime Minister Pedro Richter Prada is also included.
According to Radio Programas radio, the arrest warrant includes 140 people who […]

Peru police have reportedly seized 800 kilograms, or about 1,760 pounds, of coca leaves in La Convención province, in Cusco department.
According to Agencia Andina, the leaves were confiscated during operations along the highway between Cusco and Quillabamba between Dec. 23 and Dec. 26. Police allegedly found the leaves hidden among luggage and crates of fruit […]

Peru owes nearly $9 million in compensation payments ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and agreed to before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
According to Agencia Andina, recipients of the outstanding payments include congressional workers who are owed $3,890,000 stemming from their unlawful firings following former President Alberto Fujimori’s April 5, 1992, “self-coup,” […]

The Missouri-based Doe Run Company is facing legal action in the United States for contamination at its poly-metallic smelter in the Peruvian town of La Oroya, in Junín department. According to daily La República, two American missionaries filed suit against Doe Run, citing a 2005 environmental study at the University of Missouri - St. Louis […]

The former commander general of Peru’s Air Force, Eslevan Bello, and the former head of Peru’s intelligence service, Humberto Rozas Bonicelli, were found guilty today of helping jailed ex-presidential advisor Vladimiro Montesinos escape to Panama amid a bribery scandal in 2000. According to daily La República, the Third Anticorruption Court sentenced Bello and Rozas to […]

Peru police have begun a search for gunmen who ambushed a police patrol this morning. About 20 to 30 people armed with grenades and machine guns ambushed the patrol in Huanta province, in Ayacucho Department, killing officers Alberto Quispe Argumedo and Julio César Solano Cipriano and injuring officer Elías Pahuacho Córdova.
The director of the National […]

Peru President Alan García has proposed the creation of an Environment Ministry to meet the environmental provisions included in the free trade agreement with the United States.
During the ceremony of four new cabinet ministers yesterday, García said “the free trade agreement has brought a fundamental call to attention, that we owe to our Democrat friends […]

Families of the victims from the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres rejected the apology offered by jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori today.
During interrogation at his human rights trial, Fujimori said “yes, I ask forgiveness, now that we are in this process, from all of the victims, including those victimized by the armed forced as much […]