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Spy's asylum bid riles inmate's dad |
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September 25, 2000
LIMA, Peru (AP) — The father of an American woman jailed on terrorism charges expressed outrage Sunday that deposed spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos was allowed to flee to Panama while his daughter continues to languish in a Peruvian prison. ``Why is Mr. Montesinos above the law?'' asked Mark Berenson, after a one-hour visit Sunday with daughter Lori Berenson, 30, at a Lima women's prison. In January 1996, the New York native was sentenced to life in prison by hooded military judges for allegedly helping to plan a foiled guerrilla attack on Congress. In August she was granted a new trial in a civilian court and last week testified she was neither a member nor a collaborator of the pro-Cuban Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. Mark Berenson questioned how the former head of the National Intelligence Service, known by its Spanish acronym as SIN, had been allowed to get away when he had been so publicly exposed on videotape apparently bribing an opposition congressman. ``Mr. Montesinos is guilty of sin in the SIN. It was shown on video,'' he said after Montesinos' flight to Panama. ``I thought asylum was given to people who are persecuted, not potentially prosecuted.'' Montesinos fled to Panama around dawn Sunday. Panama has not said whether it would grant him asylum. Peru's highest military court overturned Berenson's sentence Aug. 28, citing new evidence she was not a Tupac Amaru leader. Under Peru's terrorism legislation, rebel leaders face charges of treason in secret military courts. The decision cleared the way for a new trial in an open civilian court on a lesser terrorism charge, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years. Berenson faces an uphill battle to prove her innocence. The announcement that she was being granted a new trial sparked an outcry from a wide spectrum of Peruvian society. For most Peruvians, who were caught in the cross fire between security forces and leftist guerrillas in the 1980s and early 1990s, her guilt is a foregone conclusion. |