Guilt, repentance and innocence: Lori Berenson and her baby might be going back to prison
July 20, 2010 by Andean Air Mail & PERUVIAN TIMES · 9 Comments
Editorial By Rick Vecchio
Peruvian Times Editor ~
Lori Berenson could be going back to prison with her baby if a state prosecutor has her way. The New Yorker, now 40 years old with a 14-month-old baby boy, was released in May after serving nearly 15 years of a 20-year sentence for collaborating with a Marxist guerrilla group. But political forces threaten a short-lived liberty.
The appeal seeking to rescind Berenson’s parole filed by Prosecutor Edith Chamorro together with the public advocate against terrorism for the Interior Ministry was taken up last Wednesday by a three-judge panel.
Berenson in May 2009 with her newborn son, Salvador
This legal development occurred with hardly a mention in English language media. But several Peruvian news outlets — right-wing daily newspaper Expreso in particular — have dedicated nearly daily coverage to Berenson’s release, depicting her as unrepentant for her crimes and a continuing threat to Peruvian society.
Berenson and her family had hoped President Alan García would commute the remaining five years of her sentence, allowing her and her baby to return to the United States. The day of her release, Berenson sent a hand-written petition to the Pardons Commission, accepting her guilty verdict and asking to be allowed to leave the country with her son.
Mark and Rhoda Berenson with their grandson, Salvador, in a Lima park last January. Source: FreeLori.org
“I assume my criminal responsibility for terrorist collaboration,” she wrote in the May 28 letter. “I would also like to say that I very much regret the harm I have caused Peruvian society, and I ask forgiveness from people who have been affected by my actions or words.”
The day the letter was delivered, Cabinet Chief Javier Velásquez said that Peru’s executive would examine whether to commute her sentence. A few days later, Justice Minister Victor Garcia recommended that President García grant the pardon to permit Berenson to be expelled from Peru in light of strong public opposition to her release.
But García’s administration has decided Berenson’s case is “not a priority.”
In the meantime, Berenson’s iconic image as a symbol of the political violence that plagued Peru is coming back in full force. This comes ahead of next year’s presidential elections, replete with recriminations, finger pointing and defensive denials over who is responsible for letting the dangerous terrorist Berenson loose on Peruvian society.
Thus the political backdrop to Lori Berenson’s latest legal woes. But there is an element missing in the equation — her son. If the judges rule to put Berenson back in prison for five more years, they will not be imposing sentence on her (Berenson has already been sentenced) but on her baby. His fate would be to either live in an overcrowded cell to the maximum age of 3 and then be deprived of his mother, or lose his mother now.
A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, Berenson was arrested on a public bus in downtown Lima on November 30, 1995, and charged with helping plan a thwarted takeover of Peru’s Congress. Berenson was sentenced to life by a secret military court for “treason against the fatherland,” but that conviction was vacated in 2000 and she was retried and convicted the following year by a civilian court.
There is no doubt that Lori Berenson collaborated with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The Tupac Amaru rebels viewed her as an emissary and friend when she arrived in Peru in her twenties in 1994 after serving as a personal aide to a top leader of El Salvador’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
Click on Image to read Radioprogramas Spanish-language news updates on Lori Berenson
She and Panamanian painter Pacífico Castrellón — a key prosecution witness against her — did rent the four- story house that the Tupac Amaru rebels used as their secret base to store a huge arsenal of weapons and house 20 guerrillas. Three Tupac Amaru guerrillas and one policeman died during the 11-hour shootout at that house.
Castrellón returned home to Panama last month after serving 11½ years in a Lima prison and three more years on conditional release.
Clearly Lori Berenson does not have Peruvian public sentiment on her side. She may never erase from the country’s collective memory her Jan. 8, 1996, appearance before television cameras, when she made her now famous declaration in defense of the guerrilla group. With fists clenched at her sides, her face contorted in anger, she shouted: “There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement.”
In a recent national poll, 74 percent said they opposed her parole, and 73 percent said they did not believe she was repentant for her crimes. But asked if her sentence should be commuted and she should be allowed to go home, 50 percent said yes, 43 percent said no, and 7 percent offered no opinion.
Peruvians found it offensive when Berenson described herself as a political prisoner. But who can deny the mileage Peru’s political class has gotten, and continues to get, as she is transformed into a latter day Peruvian Willy Horton?
Lori Berenson is not innocent, but who can deny that she has paid a significant debt to Peruvian society? Who can deny that her toddler, who was born in prison and took his first visit to a park and saw his first tree when he was eight months old, is innocent?
Lori Berenson and her baby pose no threat to Peruvian society. Don’t free Lori Berenson. Free Lori Berenson and her baby son.
Apoyo Opinión y Mercado national poll on Lori Berenson:
National poll conducted by Apoyo Opinión y Mercado S.A., published by Diario El Comercio on June 20, 2010. Poll based on interviews from June 16-18 with 1,200 people between the ages of 18 and 70. Margin of error +/-2.8 percentage points in provincial cities and +/-4.4 percentage points in Lima.
The Berenson child does not have to go back to prison with its mother. The baby’s father is a former MRTA terrorist. She met him in prison and later married him. They are now separated. (This is Berenson’s second marriage to a Latin American “revolutionary.”) He now lives in Lima and can take the child. Her parents have also said they hoped to bring the baby to the US. In the event,for over fourteen years Berenson and her leftist supporters have proclaimed her innocence and denegrated the government of Peru. If you read her statements with a critical eye, it is clear that Berenson’s apology is qualified. (Closer to “I’m sorry I got caught” than “I’m sorry for what I have done.”) Make no mistake, this woman is a dedicated “activist” (the term much loved by the liberal and radical left) and will be back to her old “revolutionary” habits and speech once fully freed. She has never renounced “revolutionary action.” (Her words.) Whether she has served enough time is a matter for the Peruvian people to determine. But Berenson has always refused to denounce the MRTA terrorists and Peruvians have every reason to doubt the sincerity of Berenson’s apology.
If this monster of a prosecutor prevails a large segment of the USA’s population will forever hold the country of Peru in contempt. The only reason Ms. Berenson accepted guilt which was never proven was to satisfy Peru so her sentence would be commuted. She needs to leave Peru so her back which was seriously damaged through brutal treatment in prison (i.e. making a 100 pound woman carry 50 pound sacks of flour).
Ms. Berenson was convicted mainly on the perjury of Pacífico Castrellón who was released from prison and allowed to return to Panama. This is a test of whether Peru is a civilized nation worthy of respect. Peruvians should understand that to many citizens of the USA its treatment of Ms. Berenson is considered barbarous.
It is the treatment that terrorists deserve,we remember very clear all the pain and damage this kind of people caused to our country,you are acussing us as barbarous maybe she is an inocent person like the militants who attack your country.
I do not think that Lori Berenson has learned her lesson. I think she thought getting pregnant would help get her out of prison. I do not blame the poor innocent child, he just happens to have a mother that is a terrorist. Make her serve her full sentence.
Richard’s condesending attitude toward Peru echoes Berenson’s own left-wing commentary from her very professional website. How dare the government of Peru punish a dedicated internationalist — afterall, Lori was there to help the poor people of color. Really, Richard, do you actually beleive that the average American knows this about this story or would support her if they knew of her history with the terrorists? This is an issue only for the liberal left. As for the work in the bakery: Lori appeared on Peruvian television happily explaining her work making fruit cake with her fellow inmates. In fact, she has said how much she enjoyed it. Check her website – no mention of the heavy bags of flour until quite late in her self-created narrative and long after she claimed to have a bad back. She had fourteen years to apologize and recant her lies. Perhaps the Peruvians think it now is too little and too late. Oh, and this as well…I thought the left did not want Americans interfering in the affaiurs of other countries? Is Lori the exception?
It’s interesting to see the similarities and differences between the USA and Peru. Nothing focuses our attention on these differences more than a Peruvian woman state prosecutor who has more in common with Dicken’s “Madame Defarge, the relentless, vindictive villian of the tale of two cities. DeFarge like this woman prosecutor is seeking to have Ms. Berenson’s parole recinded. The only reason she is acting so cruely is for personal political. Her action is not for Peru but solely for herself.
The USA has the shame of its prison camp at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Peru has the continuing unabated shame of its persecution of Lori Berenson. Both nations scooped up innocent bystanders to terrorism who they made into victims in a scramble to arrest the real terrorists. Neither has much about to be proud.
At least, the USA can’t be accused of individual scapegoating out of sheer vindictiveness that can only yield greater shame. Peru had its opportunity to prove Lori Berenson guilty but refused to try her with even the least amount of fairness and thus have had its judgements repudiated throughout the civilized world. When her case appeared before the Inter American Court of Human Rights instead of risking an objective decision Peru tucked its tail between its legs like a whipped dog and threatened to withdraw from the court. Is this any less an indicator of character than Ms. Berenson’s long remembered TV speech of 8 January 1996.
Why don’t Peruvians care about how the DINCOTE set up this naive young womanas a scapegoat. Why have Peruvians closed their eyes collectively to the reasons for Lori Berenson’s impersonation of La Pasionaria. Do they have the courage to look in a mirror while speaking her name?.
It all boils down to whether one considers Berenson’s (and other criminals’) stay in prison a revenge and punishment by society or a way to rehabilitate the prisoner and make him or her a useful member of society who, furthermore, will not present a probable future danger to society. If the latter view is considered the most important and decisive factor, sending Berenson (and her son) back to prison has no justification at all. It will only reinforce the idea that justice only means punishment and revenge.
Tor
“Clearly Lori Berenson does not have Peruvian public sentiment on her side. She may never erase from the country’s collective memory her Jan. 8, 1996, appearance before television cameras, when she made her now famous declaration in defense of the guerrilla group. With fists clenched at her sides, her face contorted in anger, she shouted: “There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement.””
Why does this speech make her “more” guilty? Maybe it makes her Less guilty: maybe it means you have someone who was aware of MRTA’s official goals (justice and so on) and not of any terrorist side?
Another point, as for “not having the public’s sympathy” this may have something to do with the very one-sided coverage in Peru’s media. The US media is similar; we have now learned that dozens and dozens in Guantanamo were either completely innocent or at best trying to defend themselves from outside external violence of invaders but having no interest, at all, in going to the US and attacking Americans, just angry because their relatives were civilians killed by bombs, or even less than that, just an innocent bystander that was (for a cash reward) falsely turned to the American invading forces. Where Lori is in the spectrum, one needs more information to know, but where was the admission of the grossly unfair trial, and grossly unfair second trial too, in the media in Peru? Where was the discussion of the “spectrum” from 100% innocent at one end to “wanting to carry out terrorism” on the other end? Where was the discussion of the possibility she might have been 90% close to the first of these two point?
As for this article, where is the survey, “Do you think she might be either innocent, or guilty of far lesser crimes, a largely unaware collaborator with the MRTA that was convicted of far harsher crimes, when her focus was on poverty, and at worst, she turned a blind eye to the violence of the MRTA and looked only at the violence (and massacres and torture) of the government?” This is what any honest (minimally honest) discussion would include.
As usual, all government want a big “show” and spend millions on that to get a conviction, whether fair or not. If governments spent the same on anti-poverty as on militarism and “show trials” 99% of armed revolutionaries would put down their arms, and the other 1% would be turned in by the poor, who no longer saw an uncaring violent government. Terrorism “reatail” size by armed groups is ugly, I know that as well as anyone. Terrorism “wholesale” size by governments (whether the US or Russia or China or Peru or others) is very rarely discussed: everyone is afraid of looking ‘unpatriotic’ and thus the long term problems rarely get solved.
For those who want to know what the power structure was like in Peru during the time Lori Bereson was arrested and convicted, read about the corrupt President of Peru during that time period, Alberto Fujimori. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Fujimori whcih states:
Fujimori was specifically found guilty of murder, bodily harm, and two cases of kidnapping.
Fujimori was the president of Peru at that time. And if you have a president that is that corrupt, that means you have ruling class that is corrupt. Sounds like they Peru needed a revolution. Are things any better now?