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International Emergency Committee to
BCM-IEC, 27 Old Gloucester St, London WC 1N 3XX, UK |
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International Emergency Committee to
BCM-IEC, 27 Old Gloucester St, London WC 1N 3XX, UK |
IEC-US recently received the following update.IMPRISONED DEFENSE LAWYERS FREED IN PERU
Friday, September 24, 1999For more information contact:
Will Harrell National Vice President, National Lawyers Guild
(212) 614-6432 [telephone] / (212) 614-6499 [fax]On Tuesday, September 21, word came from Lima, Peru that, after twenty-two months in jail, six defense lawyers had been acquitted of terrorist charges in a trial which began September 13. The Lima daily, La Republica, reported that Monday night, September 20th, five of the lawyers walked out of the maximum security Miguel Castro Castro prison where the trial was held. The lawyers had been arrested in November, 1997 for the "crime" of defending people accused of terrorism. The press reported that upon their release the lawyers stated that they would continue to defend whoever needed their services, regardless of what the person might be accused.
The five released on Sept. 20th were Luis Ramón Landaure (the oldest at age 72), Magno Mariñas Abanto, Rodolfo Ascencios Martel, Alfonso Gamero Quispe and Ernesto Messa Delgado (the youngest at age 46). The sixth, Estéban Suárez González, was not immediately freed, allegedly due to a bureaucratic foul up about an arrest warrant. Also, according to news reports, Quispe and Delgado are still charged with having "bribed" a police person to secure a copy of testimony against them, and the prosecutor was said to be appealing the acquittal of Ascencios Martel though the grounds for that were not stated.
All of these cases will be reviewed by a higher court. However the reports and results of the trial confirmed what the imprisoned lawyers have stated from the time of their arrest: That they were arrested, held in prison and threatened with twenty years to life because they defended people who were accused of terrorism. And that the "evidence" against them came from "arrepentidos," people who have themselves been accused or convicted who then "repent" and testify against others in order to gain leniency for themselves or their families.
This trial further exposed that the attack on defense lawyers by the Peruvian regime is politically motivated, aimed at intimidating other lawyers and Peruvian people in general. But these lawyers have been defended by a team of lawyers in Lima and the Lima Bar Association. And hundreds of lawyers, law students and others in the United States, Europe and Latin America have protested their arrest and imprisonment to the governments of Peru and the United States, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations. Lawyers from France and Colombia observed the trial itself.
While these lawyers have at this point been freed, several lawyers remain in prison, some serving life sentences, for defending political prisoners. And there are literally thousands of people in Peru's prisons who have been railroaded to long sentences by military and civilian courts. The demand that all lawyers and political prisoners be freed and the exposure and protest about what is going on in Peru must continue and intensify.
Background: Imprisoned Defense Lawyers in Peru Put on Trial (Sept 7, 99)
