A Peruvian court granted parole on Tuesday to Lori Berenson, a US citizen who served 15 years of a 20-year prison sentence in Peru for aiding leftist guerrillas during the dark days of the country’s civil war.
She was imprisoned in 1995 after being pulled off a bus in Lima and charged with being a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a leftist insurgency active in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s.
Her family always maintained that she was unfairly convicted and never took up arms during the period of social unrest in the country.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Lawyers for the government said they would appeal, though she was expected to be released by yesterday following the ruling by Judge Jessica Leon.
Peruvian President Alan Garcia is scheduled to visit US President Barack Obama at the White House soon, although neither president has commented on the case.
Peru’s Ministry of Justice has said it wants to deport Berenson, 40, but the court said she must check in with authorities once a month in Peru, where she will work as a translator while pursuing a dream of opening a bakery.
Wrapped in a shawl with her brown hair pulled back in a long braid, a quiet Berenson smiled and hugged her husband after court officials announced the decision at a prison in the Chorillos neighborhood of Lima, where she has been living with her year-old son.
“We are thrilled and so pleased that the Peruvian judge ruled that Lori has earned her conditional liberty, as they call it in Peru,” her mother, Rhoda Berenson, said by telephone from New York. “She and her baby can now start a new life together.”
“This decision is going to be criticized, but it was well founded,” said her husband, Anibal Apari Sanchez, a former MRTA member who is a lawyer and represented her at the hearing. “It’s legally impossible for her to be deported.”
Berenson married Apari in 2003. The New Yorker studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to Latin America to work as a human rights activist.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The