Lori Helene Berenson (born November 13, 1969) is an American who served a 20-year prison sentence for collaboration with a guerrilla organization in Peru in 1996. Berenson was convicted of collaborating with the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a group which advocated the overthrow of the Peruvian government by force and was considered to be a terrorist organization by the Peruvian government, and which was also on the U.S. State Department's official "terrorist organization" list from 1997–2001.Peru 2010 Crime & Safety Report. Osac.gov. Retrieved on December 2, 2015.Mrta: What Does It Mean Today?, leaked diplomatic cable from U.S. Embassy in Peru on Friday May 30, 2008 . Cablegatesearch.net. Retrieved on December 2, 2015. Her arrest and conviction, and the circumstances surrounding her trials, drew considerable attention in both the United States and Peru.
Early life and education Berenson was born and raised in New York City to Rhoda and Mark Berenson, both college professors. Her family moved into a three-bedroom duplex apartment at East Midtown Plaza in the early 1970s. After graduating from LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, she enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1987.MIT Western Hemisphere Project: The case of Lori Berenson, MIT '91. Web.mit.edu. Retrieved on December 2, 2015."I Am Not a Terrorist.". Boston Magazine. Retrieved on December 2, 2015. On her web site, she states that she volunteered for soup kitchens and blood banks and also worked as a mother's helper in the Hamptons as a teenager. While an undergraduate at MIT, she volunteered with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). She dropped out of MITLori Berenson, Prisoner for 15 Years, Released to Peru with Child – ABC News. Abcnews.go.com (May 26, 2010). Retrieved on December 2, 2015. in 1988 as a sophomore majoring in archeology and anthropology and continued to volunteer for CISPES. Later, she went to El Salvador and became secretary and interpreter for Leonel González, a leader of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), during negotiations that achieved peace in 1992. FMLN was at that time an umbrella organization associated with various leftist guerrilla organizations and the Salvadoran Communist Party and working to overthrow the Salvadoran military dictatorship. FMLN transitioned during the peace process in order to become a legal political party. González (aka Salvador Sánchez Cerén) would become the President of El Salvador in 2014.
Activities in Peru and arrest In Peru, Berenson met members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a group that committed attacks in Peru including kidnapping, bank robberies, extortion, hostage taking, and bombings. During these attacks some 400 people died in attacks planned by the MRTA. Berenson initially denied knowing that they were MRTA members. After acknowledging that her associates were members she maintained that she did not know the group was planning to conduct an attack on Peru’s Congress or planning any other act of violence.Guilt, repentance and innocence: Lori Berenson and her baby might be going back to prison
Berenson obtained press credentials for herself and her photographer to the Congress of Peru to interview some of its members and attend sessions where she took notes and sketched a seating plan. Afterwards, the media reported these to be "false journalist credentials". Berenson and those who supported her contended that she was on assignment from two U.S. publications, Modern Times and Third World Viewpoint, to work as a freelance journalist writing articles about the effects of poverty on women in Perú. Her photographer, Nancy Gilvonio, was actually the wife of Néstor Cerpa, the MRTA second-in-command — although Berenson maintained she was unaware of this connection, saying that she knew her only as a Bolivian photographer. Berenson had entered the main Congress building with Gilvonio several times during 1995 to interview members of Congress. Gilvonio was alleged to have provided the information she collected to the MRTA including detailed information on the floor plans of Congress, its security and members. The alleged plan was for the MRTA to invade the Congress building, kidnap the legislators, and exchange the hostages for MRTA prisoners.
On November 30, 1995, Berenson and Gilvonio were arrested on a public bus in downtown Lima. Berenson was accused of being a leader of the MRTA, which had been officially classified as a terrorist group by the government. Berenson was further accused of aiding the MRTA with her house being used as a meeting house and arms depot, and of using her connections to facilitate arms purchases, she was also implicated in participating in the planned attack on the Peruvian congress.
Within hours after Berenson's arrest, the government launched an all-night siege of the MRTA safe house in an upscale neighborhood in Lima which Berenson had co-rented with an associate. At the end of the siege, three MRTA guerrillas and one police officer had died and 14 guerrillas were captured. The upper floors of the house were found to contain an "arsenal of weapons" and ammunition including 3,000 sticks of dynamite.
Diagrams, notes, weapons, and police and military uniforms found at the safe house suggested that the group was planning to seize members of Congress and trade them for captured guerrillas. Police also seized a floor plan and a scale architectural model of the Congress building.
Berenson said that she was unaware of what was happening on the upper floors and had even moved out some months prior to her arrest. She denied knowing of the presence of either the weaponry or the guerrillas, and she also denied knowing that the documents she prepared would be used for terrorism. She later admitted that she had learned that her associates were MRTA members and she said: "It might not have been intentional, but the bottom line is: I did collaborate with them." In the same interview she maintained that she had not been aware that weapons were being amassed in the upper floors of her house which she had sublet to the MRTA members, and she also maintained that she was unaware that violent actions were being planned at the Congress, stating that "at that time in Fujimori's dictatorship, Congress was the only place that there was some sort of democratic process."
On January 8, 1996, the DINCOTE (División Nacional Contra el Terrorismo, or National Counterterrorism Division) hosted a news event in which they showed Berenson to the press. At the event, she shouted in Spanish, with her fists clenched to her sides, in a statement to the local reporters:
The image of Berenson defiantly shouting to the press continues to make her unpopular in Peru. Her supporters later offered the explanation that her vehement defense of MRTA came about because she was angry over the treatment of a wounded cell mate and that she was instructed by authorities to shout in order to be heard.
Trials After she was tried in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment, Berenson became, as The Guardian put it, a "cause celèbre for human rights campaigners and a symbol for leftwing social activists around the world", except in Peru, where parties and newspapers across the political spectrum condemned her actions, and criticized the unwillingness of European and American media, even progressive ones, to apply the label "terrorist" to citizens of "First World" countries.
Elements of her trial were criticized in statements from institutions ranging from the US State Department to Amnesty International to be violations of human rights and lacking in impartiality, provoking controversy in the United States and other countries. In particular, she was allegedly denied the right to examine the government's evidence and witnesses.
In accordance with anti-terrorism legislation enacted during a state of emergency declared by the authoritarianPhantom Menace, Harvard International Review. Hir.harvard.edu. Retrieved on December 2, 2015. government of President Alberto Fujimori, Berenson was tried in a closed courtroom by a military tribunal on a charge of treason against the fatherland for leadership of a terrorist organization. This charge did not require Peruvian citizenship as an element.
The proceedings were conducted by a hooded military judge who spoke through a voice distortion apparatus (judges often concealed their identities to protect themselves from assassination). On January 11, 1996, six weeks after her arrest and three days after her presentation to the media, Berenson was convicted of all charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole. An appeal lodged against the conviction was dismissed on January 30. Due to the nature of the closed military court, human rights campaigners protested her conviction and disputed the fairness of the proceedings.
In February 1999, after three years of fact-finding, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Ms. Berenson had been arbitrarily deprived of her liberty in violation of various articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Peru is a signatory. According to the Carter Center among the violations of international legal standards and due process, "Ms. Berenson's trial was in a secret military court, where her lawyer was not allowed to cross-examine witnesses or challenge evidence," and former president Carter stated directly that he was "deeply concerned that Lori Berenson has not been afforded her rights of due process by law."
In 2000, following a change of government in Peru and after years of political pressure from the United States and the human rights community, Peru's Supreme Military Council overturned Berenson's treason conviction and life sentence and remanded her case to the civilian court for retrial. On June 20, 2001, a three-judge panel convicted Berenson of collaboration with terrorists, but ruled she was not a terrorist. She was sentenced to 20 years, with consideration given for time already served under her prior conviction.Krauss, Clifford. "Week in Review – Berenson Reconvicted", The New York Times, June 24, 2001.
In 2002, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States condemned the system under which Berenson was tried. Alleging violations of the American Convention on Human Rights, to which Peru is a party, Berenson's case was referred to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States when the government of Peru refused to accept the Commission's recommendations.
On November 25, 2004, the Inter-American Court upheld the conviction and sentence. The Court did condemn the judicial system under which Berenson was originally tried, and also condemned Berenson's earlier incarceration at Yanamayo Prison. Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo hailed the verdict, and The New York Times noted that few Peruvians have any sympathy for Berenson.
Efforts to free Berenson and interest in Peru Over the years, there were several efforts made on behalf of Berenson, stemming from concerns she did not obtain a fair trial or was not receiving humanitarian treatment, or simply to obtain her release. Various endeavors came from Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.