Peru News

Drawing my attention today: Otto has picked up on the news that Peru may be looking for a way to kick out Monterrico Metals, the company involved with the Majaz torture case.

Meanwhile, prosecutor Avelino Guillén has claimed that Alberto Fujimori ordered the Cantuta killings in retaliation for the Tarata bombing, which had taken place shortly before. This makes a connection between two of the key events in the Peruvian conflict; the Shining Path bomb in the Calle Tarata hit city dwellers in affluent Miraflores, causing great loss of life - impossible to ignore, when those primitive Indians getting themselves killed in the highlands were more easily forgotten. Two days later, nine students and a professor from the university known as 'Cantuta' were abducted by security forces and disappeared. Their bodies were found months later. Apparently they were taken as 'terrorists', which they weren't (and even if they had been, their place would have been awaiting trial, not extrajudicial execution).

The Cantuta massacre was carried out by the military death squad Grupo Colina. Which brings me to my final piece of news: two of its members, Douglas Arteaga Pascual and Ángel Pino Díaz, have been freed. The two have been connected with the Barrios Altos massacre, but apparently, despite the evidence against them, the Human Rights Prosecutor has not acted fast enough in bringing a case. We've already seen in Argentina that not adhering to the bureaucratic rule of law is enough to get major human rights abusers out on the street again.