Peru: Third Attempt on Life of Key Torture Witness

[Judi Lynn]

Peru: Third Attempt on Life of Key Torture Witness
03 Jun 2005 19:00:27 GMT

Source: Human Rights Watch

(Lima, Peru, June 3, 2005)-An attempt to kill a key witness in an upcoming torture trial highlights the Peruvian government's failure to provide adequate protection for those planning to testify against military officers, Human Rights Watch said today. The shooting attempt was the third such attack the witness, Luis Alberto Ramírez Hinostroza, has suffered in the last 15 months. Several shots were fired at Ramírez from a moving car on Wednesday evening, June 1, as he was crossing the Mariscal Castillo park in Lima accompanied by a police bodyguard. The park is close to the office of a Peruvian human rights group, the Legal Defense Institute (Instituto de Defensa Legal, IDL), where Ramírez had just held a meeting with his lawyer. The police guard covered Ramírez with his body to protect him and both luckily escaped injury.

"The Peruvian government must fully investigate the attack on Luis Alberto Ramírez and bring to justice whoever is responsible," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "This attack might have been prevented had earlier ones been properly investigated."

In previous attacks on March 13 and August 30, 2004, unidentified gunmen tried to kill Ramírez in Huancayo, the city where he lived until recently. In the second incident, Ramírez received a gunshot wound to the stomach and had to undergo surgery. After international appeals he was assigned two police guards and he moved with his family to Lima. But Ramírez has continued to notice that cars were following him.

Ramírez is due to testify in the trial of retired General Luis Pérez Documet, who was military chief of Junín province in the early 1990s, during Peru's armed conflict. At least nine university students were forcibly disappeared during this period after being held at the "December 9" military base in Huancayo, under the command of Pérez Documet. In March 2004 the Fourth Criminal Court of Huancayo charged the former general with kidnapping.
(snip/...)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/ce626d01e41457835e9fa2331cdcce96.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Checked to see what was going on in Peru in the then.

Peru Intelligence Scandal Continues
The CIA Does It Again
By Louis Lingg
25 September 2000

.......This is a very unconvincing explanation, to say the least. First of all, Fujimori and Montesinos have survived scandals that make the present bribery allegations seem like a picnic in the park. The former led a military coup against his own government in 1992, threw his ministers in jail, installed his own hand-picked Congress and Judiciary, and instituted his own Constitution. During his presidency he has acquired notoriety around the world for countless 'disappearances' of activists, journalists and other critics of his regime, mass arrests of thousands of people, mistrials by hooded judges, State-sponsored death squads, and the imprisonment of lawyers who attempted to defend political prisoners. Amnesty International's latest Word Report notes that, during 1999, "undreds of Peruvian prisoners falsely charged with terrorism-related offences remained incarcerated. Journalists, opposition leaders and human rights defenders received threats in what appears to be a pattern of systematic intimidation against those critical of the authorities. Torture and ill-treatment remained widespread. Civilians continued to be tried by military courts for the terrorism-related offences of 'treason' and 'aggravated terrorism'" (1).

In 1997, when three constitutional judges ruled that, according to the Constitution, Fujimori could not run again for President, the latter had them dismissed. Later on that year, when the three judges submitted their case before the Inter-American Court, Fujimori simply withdrew Peru from the Court's jurisdiction.
Montesinos, who organized and led Fujimori's 1992 military coup, has been the President's iron glove. Widely believed to have directed the notorious 'la Canuta' murders where hundreds of activists and their families were murdered by masked paramilitaries, Montesinos has been the leader of the Colina death squads, the armed wing of the National Intelligence Service. The Colina squads have been known to perform summary executions of left-wing activists. In 1992 he boasted that he himself had tortured four generals who were arrested after they staged a failed coup against Fujimori's regime. In 1997, when a national television station revealed gross human rights violations by the country's intelligence services, Montesinos had the station closed down and its Israeli-born owner stripped of his Peruvian nationality and sent to Israel.
(snip)

Ever since his initial visit to Washington D.C. in 1976, the C.I.A. has viewed Montesinos as a valuable operative in Fujimori's government, and in South America at large. This was primarily due to his role in exterminating a series of armed leftist organizations, such as the once powerful Shining Path and the FMLN.
Throughout the early 1990s, in numerous interagency reviews, the C.I.A. repeatedly stressed Montesinos' importance as a U.S. intelligence ally, while at the same time dismissing as "unfounded" and "besides the issue" allegations that he was behind serious human rights violations against civilians and groups. In fact, Montesinos' promotion of U.S. interests in Peru and neighboring countries was so successful that many C.I.A. officials referred to him as "the Doctor", or "Mr Fix It" (2).
(snip/...)

http://www.newsinsider.org/editorials/Peru_CIA.html

[LiberalVoice]

2. Usually when you have a "failure to provide adequate protection"...

the person winds up dead right? Just curious.

[struggle4progress]

3. Peru: Third Attempt on Life of Key Torture Witness

03 Jun 2005 19:00:27 GMT
Source: Human Rights Watch

(Lima, Peru, June 3, 2005)-An attempt to kill a key witness in an upcoming torture trial highlights the Peruvian government's failure to provide adequate protection for those planning to testify against military officers, Human Rights Watch said today. The shooting attempt was the third such attack the witness, Luis Alberto Ramírez Hinostroza, has suffered in the last 15 months. Several shots were fired at Ramírez from a moving car on Wednesday evening, June 1, as he was crossing the Mariscal Castillo park in Lima accompanied by a police bodyguard. The park is close to the office of a Peruvian human rights group, the Legal Defense Institute (Instituto de Defensa Legal, IDL), where Ramírez had just held a meeting with his lawyer. The police guard covered Ramírez with his body to protect him and both luckily escaped injury.

"The Peruvian government must fully investigate the attack on Luis Alberto Ramírez and bring to justice whoever is responsible," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "This attack might have been prevented had earlier ones been properly investigated."

In previous attacks on March 13 and August 30, 2004, unidentified gunmen tried to kill Ramírez in Huancayo, the city where he lived until recently. In the second incident, Ramírez received a gunshot wound to the stomach and had to undergo surgery. After international appeals he was assigned two police guards and he moved with his family to Lima. But Ramírez has continued to notice that cars were following him.

Ramírez is due to testify in the trial of retired General Luis Pérez Documet, who was military chief of Junín province in the early 1990s, during Peru's armed conflict. At least nine university students were forcibly disappeared during this period after being held at the "December 9" military base in Huancayo, under the command of Pérez Documet. In March 2004 the Fourth Criminal Court of Huancayo charged the former general with kidnapping. <snip>

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/ce626d01e41457835e9fa2331cdcce96.htm