BY LUISA ARA
In the early morning of December 21, 30 police wearing gas masks and wielding clubs stormed the section of the Santa Monica de Chorrillos high security women's prison where political prisoners Lori Berenson, Nancy Gilvonio Conde and Maria Concepcion Pincheira Saez are held. Throwing tear-gas canisters at the cells, the police seized Berenson and Gilvonio in order to transfer them to other prisons.
Berenson is a US human rights activist and journalist who moved to El Salvador in 1992 to work with human rights and religious groups assisting political prisoners and asylum seekers.
Berenson went to Lima, Peru, in 1995 to report on the impact of poverty on women. She was arrested on November 30, 1995, accused of being involved in the revolutionary Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a charge she denies.
Berenson was charged with terrorism and faced a military court. Never formally notified of the charge, Berenson was convicted by a hooded judge who had no legal training.
Initially sentenced to life imprisonment, an energetic international solidarity campaign forced the Peruvian government to commute Berenson's sentence to 20 years' jail without parole in 1998.
The attack came after the National Penitentiary Institution (INPE) decided in December to move Berenson to a prison in the remote province of Cajamarca and Gilvonio to one in Chiclayo. While the INPE can decide to transfer prisoners between prisons, it is not supposed to decide such transfers arbitrarily or use of violence.
The Peruvian government claims that Berenson was moved for disciplinary reasons. However, Berenson was not informed of any infractions, or given the chance to defend herself from such accusations, as is mandated under Peruvian law.
The brutality of the attack was shocking. "Lori was overcome by the gas, brutally manhandled and forcefully removed from her cell", Berenson's mother Rhoda Berenson, told the media. "She was carried semi-conscious wearing only her sleeping clothes, leaving behind all her possessions including her eye-glasses, medicines and shoes. [Some of the 16 other women in the cell] were gassed, beaten and threatened with rape."
In an official communique issued a few days after the prisoners' removal, the justice ministry said the detainees were "in a perfect state" and that the transfer was done "under the law".
On December 23, Berenson filed a complaint against the Peruvian justice minister, the director of the Peruvian penal system, the prison director and other officials for abuse of authority and injury. Other prisoners have lodged similar complaints.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, January 23, 2002.
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