El Primer Juzgado Supraprovincial, declaró procedente el pedido de libertad condicional a la ciudadana estadunidense, condenada por terrorismo, Lori Berenson Mejía. Foto: ANDINA/ PJ
Early Thursday morning, former MRTA terrorist group member Lori Berenson left the country after having been expelled by Peruvian authorities as she completed her 20-year terror sentence and left behind a past she regretted belatedly.
“[…] Lori Berenson was expelled in perpetuity from the national territory early this morning […] The expulsion was finally completed as police officers escorted her to the airport, where she boarded a commercial flight to the United States sometime after midnight,” the National Migration Authority said in a release.
The 46-year old New Yorker arrived at Lima-based Jorge Chavez International Airport wearing a burgundy blouse and black pants and carrying her six-year old son along with her lawyer and father of her child, Anibal Apari.
Some people shouted ‘terruca’ at her — a slang word for terrorist — as she headed to the departure lounge walking through a phalanx of cameras.
According to official reports, Berenson and her son’s final destination was New York.
The American woman spent 15 years in prison and was on parole for other five for aiding the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) with plans to seize the Congress of the Republic in 1995. She will not be admitted back in Peru according to a legislation providing for the expulsion of foreigners who were convicted of crimes.
“This measure is applied to foreigners and once they are outside the country, they cannot enter Peru legally again,” Peru’s Anti-terrorism Attorney Milko Ruiz said.
Berenson came to Peru from Central America in 1994; she was granted conditional release in November 2010, when she requested a reduction of her punishment citing her good behavior while in prison after serving three quarters of her sentence.
She was released, but obliged to remain in Peru for five years until her sentence end date.
The former MRTA member was jailed in 1996 and initially sentenced to life in prison. She was convicted of terrorist-related offences and treason by hooded military judges, under the terms of a severe anti-terrorism law.
In light of an international campaign, especially in her home country, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights suggested a new trial in 2002, which revised and changed the sentence to 20 years from the date she was arrested, 1995.
The MRTA terrorist group was defeated and most of their members have died. Its founder, Victor Polay, is still serving a life imprisonment.
(END) AFP/INT/RMB/MVB
Published: 12/3/2015