RIGHTS-PERU: Alleged Letter-Bomb Killer Faces Justice

[Judi Lynn]

RIGHTS-PERU: Alleged Letter-Bomb Killer Faces Justice
By Ángel Páez

http://www.ipsnews.net.nyud.net:8090/fotos/50831-20100329.jpg

Captain Víctor Penas Sandoval

LIMA, Mar 29, 2010 (IPS) - The arrest in Peru of a former Army Intelligence Service (SIE) agent, retired Captain Víctor Penas, may clear up the murder of journalist Melissa Alfaro, and the mutilation of human rights defender Augusto Zúñiga, both victims of letter-bombs in 1991.

According to the case file, Penas, a sabotage expert who graduated in 1980 from the notorious School of the Americas (SOA), made the letter-bombs as part of a covert operation to eliminate suspected collaborators of the leftwing guerrilla movements Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

One other person lost his life and another lost a limb due to plastic explosives allegedly sent by Penas to different addresses in Lima, including Congress.

The operation had the approval of Vladimiro Montesinos, de facto chief of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) and security adviser to then president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). Both men are currently serving long sentences on human rights and corruption charges.

"It has taken nearly two decades for Penas and his accomplices to be brought to answer for the murder of Melissa, a journalist who was just doing her job," Alaín Alfaro, her brother, told IPS.

The prosecution file opened against Penas by judge Magalli Báscones, to which IPS had access, states that the accused sent the first letter-bomb to Augusto Zúñiga, a lawyer with the non-governmental Human Rights Commission (COMISEDH), on Mar. 15, 1991. Zúñiga lost his left forearm in the explosion.

On Jun. 21 that year, Penas is alleged to have sent another bomb to the head of Cambio magazine, Carlos Arroyo, suspected of links with the MRTA. But the letter was wrongly addressed and was delivered to a neighbour, who was killed on opening the envelope.

Seven days later, Penas sent another letter-bomb to the head of the El Diario newspaper, a mouthpiece for Sendero Luminoso. But it was the building's caretaker who lost an arm, when it exploded as he checked the contents.

These collateral victims did not stop Penas' efforts to kill Arroyo, following orders from his superiors. On Oct. 10 he sent another letter-bomb, correctly addressed this time. But the letter was opened by Melissa Alfaro, Arroyo's assistant, killing her instantly.

Penas sent a fifth letter-bomb to leftwing lawmaker Ricardo Letts, which arrived at his congressional office on Oct. 16. But Letts' suspicions were aroused and he called the police, who disarmed the device just in time.

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[Judi Lynn]

1. Peru: old crimes catch up with ex-officers

Peru: old crimes catch up with ex-officers

Submitted by Weekly News Update on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 16:54. According to a report in the Peruvian daily La República on Mar. 5, Jesús Sosa Saavedra, a former agent of Peru's Army Intelligence Service (SIE), has confessed to prosecutor Alicia Chamorro Bermúdez that he participated in the 1988 "Operation Lucero," in which the SIE captured and executed alleged Ecuadorian spy Enrique Duchicela and Lt. Marco Barrantes, a Peruvian officer also accused of espionage. Sosa Saavedra said Col. Oswaldo Hanke Velasco, then the head of the SIE, ordered the operation. According to La República, this testimony may bring Hanke Velasco to trial; he had avoided prosecution in the past.

Sosa Saavedra—nicknamed "Kerosene" because he used the fuel to kill his victims—was already in prison as a former member of the Colina Group, a death squad organized by military intelligence and allegedly reporting to former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for causing deaths and serious injuries while in office. (Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, Bolivia, March 5 from EFE)

On the night of March 11 Peruvian judicial police captured another former SIE agent, army captain Víctor Penas Sandoval, who had been in hiding. The First Special Tribunal of Lima has accused Penas Sandoval of carrying out terrorist acts on the orders of Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's intelligence adviser and the founder of the Colina Group; Montesinos too is now a prisoner.

Penas Sandoval allegedly made and sent at least five letter bombs in 1991, while he was stationed in Lima. Attorney Augusto Zúñiga Paz, of the Human Rights Commission (COMISEDH), lost an arm when he opened the first of these letter bombs on March 15; Víctor Ruiz León was killed on June 21 when he opened the second, which was intended for a neighbor, the director of Cambio, a magazine supporting the rebel Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA); on June 28 the third blew off the arm of a caretaker at El Diario, a publication supporting the rebel Communist Party of Peru (PCP, Sendero Luminoso); the fourth killed Cambio editor Melissa Alfaro Méndez on Oct. 10. Penas Sandoval was moved out of Lima after he failed in an effort to assassinate leftist legislative deputy Ricardo Letts Colmenares by letter bomb.

In 1993 a military court charged Penas Sandoval with the October 1992 murder of eight drug traffickers and the theft of 300 kilos of drugs in Balsayacu, Alto Huallaga. Penas Sandoval decided to respond by exposing military crimes, and he arranged to meet with officials at the US embassy in Lima on June 30, 1994. He is apparently the unnamed officer cited in a declassified document released by the National Security Archives, a Washington, DC-based nongovernmental organization; the document reports on a lengthy conversation in which a Peruvian intelligence officer admitted to making the letter bombs and said they were ordered by Montesinos. The officer also told the officials about the army’s routine practice of torturing, raping and murdering captives during military operations against rebels during the 1980s. He sometimes chuckled while describing torture techniques.

Penas Sandoval reportedly asked to be admitted to the US. The embassy officials recommended against admitting him, but it is not clear what action the US took, if any, in response to his revelations of terrorist acts by the Peruvian government, a US ally. (AFP, March 12; La República, March 13; "The Search for Truth: The Declassified Record on Human Rights Abuses in Peru," Document 26, National Security Archives, Aug. 28, 2003)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8463