Posted on 04/08/2008 7:40:56 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LIMA, Peru - A Peruvian court on Tuesday convicted a general and three members of a death squad of kidnapping and murder in a ruling that prosecutors say could set a precedent in the trial of former President Alberto Fujimori.
The four were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 to 35 years in connection with a 1992 massacre, but the three-judge panel absolved another member of the death squad and three officers accused of providing support for it.
The verdict made no reference to a ninth man charged in the case.
The judges found the three former soldiers and an ex-general guilty of participating in the 1992 kidnapping and murder of nine students and a professor from La Cantuta University who were suspected of being rebel collaborators.
The killings became a landmark human rights case in Peru, where security forces fought a bloody war against Shining Path Rebels in the 1980s and early 1990s. The insurgency began to fade after Abimael Guzman and other key rebel commanders were captured in 1992.
In a separate courtroom, Fujimori is being tried for allegedly authorizing the death squad to fight the guerrillas.
Jose Pelaez, the prosecutor in Fujimori's trial, said guilty verdicts in Tuesday's ruling would "establish a precedent" in the former president's case.
"If the men who carried out the acts are found guilty, undoubtedly, the man at the top of the command chain, the man behind it all, Fujimori, also will be condemned for the same acts," he said before the verdict was issued.
Fujimori has denied any knowledge of the death squad's existence and says he never approved a dirty war against leftist rebels.
Five of the nine accused men allegedly belonged to the Colina death squad, a clandestine unit formed by the army to battle the insurgents. The four others charged in the case were accused of providing support.
The nine included former army Gen. Julio Salazar Monroe, who was head of the National Intelligence Service at the time. He received a sentence of 35 years in prison.
The three convicted members of the death squad received prison sentences of 15 years each.
The alleged leader of the Colina group, ex-army Maj. Santiago Martin Rivas, was not on trial. He is already serving a 20-year sentence for the killings issued by a military tribunal.
The Colina death squad — which existed in 1991 and 1992 — had more than 30 members at its peak. Many of them face trial for various crimes.
A truth commission determined in 2003 that the insurgency took nearly 70,000 lives between 1980 and 2000, including non-combatants, members of the security forces and rebels.
In 2000 Fujimori fled to Japan, his parents' homeland, as his 10-year autocratic regime collapsed in a corruption scandal involving Montesinos, his closest adviser.
In 2005, he flew unexpectedly to Chile, from where he was extradited in September 2007 to face trial on human rights and corruption charges.
The Pinochet Principle
Save your country from Communism, set up a stable government,building on the stability the country slowly evolves into a democracy, then the Communists you didn’t kill start calling themselves Socialists and as soon as they get elected they arrest you.
The reason you only hear of right wing ‘death squads’ is that when the left is in power they don’t need clandestine groups to do the killing they simply use the military and the police to kill their enemies.
Thats pretty much like it. Freedom fighters clean up a country and leftists go about ruining it.
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