Lori Berenson
Lori Berenson (born in 1969 in New York City) is a U.S. political activist currently serving a twenty-year jail sentence in Peru on terrorism charges.
Lorenson is a graduate of MIT. In the early 1990s, she spent several years teaching English and doing translation and secretarial work for human rights organizations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Later, she worked as a freelance journalist while traveling in Peru.
On November 30, 1995, Berenson was arrested on a public bus in downtown Lima, the capital of Peru, accused of collaborating with an insurgent organization, the Movimiento Revolucionaro Túpac Amaru (MRTA).
Anti-terrorist police accused Berenson of providing MRTA with detailed information on the floor plans of the Congress, its security and members, and that she rented an apartment and a house for them to use.
The police claimed that diagrams, notes, weapons and police and military uniforms found at the safe house suggested that the group was planning to seize members of Congress and trade them for captured guerrillas.
Berenson's lawyers argued that she had no prior knowledge of the planned attack, and that she believed that the information she gathered for an article on the Peruvian Congress would be used by the guerrillas to form a political party.
A hooded military tribunal, using anti-terrorism legislation enacted during a state of emergency declared by Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, sentenced her to life in prison for "treason against the fatherland" – essentially, the crime of aggravated terrorism.
In January 1996, the DINCOTE (Peruvian agency created to fight Drug Trafficking and Terrorism) staged a media event, in which they showed Berenson to the press. At the event, she appeared defiant and stated that the MRTA was not a criminal terrorist organization but instead a "Revolutionary Movement". Due to her tone and attitude, her words sounded like a radical political diatribe. Most Peruvians still believe she was definitely a member of the MRTA, which is considered a Terrorist organization.
In 1998, Amnesty International issued a press release declaring Berenson to be a political prisoner.
Amnesty criticized the Peruvian anti-terrorism legislation, stating that, "it is unacceptable for hundreds of political prisoners like Berenson not to be able to exercise their basic human right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal."
In the spring of 2001, due to international pressure, her sentence was vacated and she was retried by a civilian court under the same anti-terrorism legislation. The original verdict was upheld, but Berenson's sentence was reduced to twenty years. Under this new sentence, Berenson is not likely to go free until 2015, after which she will be deported from Peru.
When U.S. president George W. Bush traveled to Peru in April 2002 to meet with Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, there was pressure on him to search for a humantarian solution to Berensen's situation, but Bush's firm avowal of a "war on terrorism" left little likelihood of his arguing on behalf of a U.S. citizen accused of terrorism abroad.
Berenson's case has been referred to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A seven-hour hearing was held on May 7, 2004, at which her lawyers, her mother, and representatives of the Peruvian state gave evidence and argued their positions. The Court is expected to issue a judgment later this year.
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