Lima, Peru — Five years after hooded military judges ordered Lori Berenson jailed for life for involvement with leftist rebels, the New York native is to get a retrial beginning today this time in public, before civilian judges.
Prosecutors are seeking the minimum 20-year sentence for "terrorist collaboration" for the 31-year-old Berenson.
Mark Berenson, father of Lori Berenson, holds a card showing his daughter that reads "Free Lori Now". A retrial for Lori Berenson, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, begins today.
The government hopes the trial will demonstrate judicial fairness after the fall of ex-President Alberto Fujimori, whose regime exercised political control over the courts for most of the last decade.
Berenson's parents, both university professors who retired to work for her release, say a fair trial is impossible in a nation where she is widely. They also argue the new trial constitutes double jeopardy.
"I'm confident that if nothing else, the public will hear Lori tell the truth," her mother, Rhoda Berenson, told The Associated Press. "Peruvians will have a chance to see that she doesn't have horns."
Berenson was convicted of treason for allegedly helping the rebel Tupac Amaru, known by its Spanish acronym, MRTA, plan a thwarted takeover of Congress to exchange hostages for jailed rebels.
After years of pressure from the United States, Peru's top military court overturned her conviction in August, paving the way for a new civilian trial on the lesser collaboration charge.
Berenson's lawyer, Jose Luis Sandoval, maintains his client was deceived by the guerrillas and said rebels scheduled to testify have altered, recanted or disavowed statements that implicated Berenson in the first trial.
Berenson concedes that she rented a safe house with Pacifico Castrellon, a Panamanian now serving a 30-year sentence for involvement with the rebels. But she insists she did not know her housemates in 1995 were part of the Tupac Amaru group, known for bombings, kidnappings and taking protection money from narcotics traffickers.
When police raided the safe house, which Berenson had left three months earlier to move into a smaller apartment, 14 guerrillas were captured.
Evidence allegedly seized from the house includes a forged Peruvian election ID card bearing her photo, but without her signature or fingerprint. Her parents maintain it was planted by anti-terrorism police.
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