(New York) - The Peruvian Congress should firmly reject proposed amnesty legislation covering commandos who killed fourteen guerrillas during the 1997 rescue of hostages in the Japanese Ambassador's residence, Human Rights Watch said today.
The amnesty bill, which was introduced in Congress yesterday, would bar the criminal prosecution of the more than 100 commandos who participated in the April 1997 raid. Evidence suggests that eight of the fourteen guerrillas killed during the rescue operation were summarily executed.
"The successful rescue of the hostages turned these commandos into national heroes, but the evidence of illegal killings is compelling," said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division. "National gratitude is no reason for shielding them from justice."
In a dramatic and carefully planned raid, the commandos rescued seventy-one hostages being held by guerrillas of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru, MRTA), after a four-month siege of the Japanese Ambassador's residence in Lima. According to the official version of the events, all fourteen of the guerrillas were shot dead in a gun battle. At the time, a photograph was widely published of then-President Alberto Fujimori standing on a staircase strewn with the bodies of slain guerrillas.
Recent forensic investigations, however, have established that eight of the guerrillas were apparently shot in the head after capture or while defenseless because of injuries. A Japanese former hostage declared that he saw one of the guerrillas, Eduardo Cruz Sánchez, alive and in custody after the raid. Forensic examination revealed that Cruz died from a single bullet to the back of the neck.
Two amnesty proposals are now under discussion in congressional committees, one submitted by the Popular American Revolutionary Alliance party (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, APRA) of former presidential candidate Alan García, the other by the National Unity party (Unidad Nacional, UN). The UN bill "grants amnesty" to army Gen. José Williams Zapata, who headed up the operation, and to the "official personnel who participated in the freeing and rescue of the hostages."
The amnesty proposals were prompted by judicial warrants for the arrest of ten senior army officers who participated in the raid, issued by judge Cecilia Polack Boluarte on May 13. The warrants allow the accused to be held for fifteen days before formal charges are filed. Peru's ministers of defense, justice and the interior have all criticized the arrest orders.
The amnesty proposals clearly conflict with the principles enunciated by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in March 2001, ruling against the Peruvian government in the case of the 1991 Barrios Altos massacre. In that case, which involved the amnesty law passed in 1995 by the Fujimori government, the Court declared the amnesty null and void because it conflicted with Peru's human rights treaty obligations. It later interpreted that ruling as applicable to all similar cases.
Besides the proposed amnesty law, the Peruvian Congress issued a declaration yesterday expressing concern at the arrest warrants against the officers involved in the rescue operation. The warrants have also been criticized by the human rights ombudsman, in a rare public disagreement with the position taken by Peru's nongovernmental human rights organizations.
"Peru's opinion leaders clearly feel differently about this case than about other human rights violations committed during the Fujimori government that are currently under investigation in the courts," said Vivanco. "But the principle is exactly the same. If the accused want to challenge the grounds of their arrest they should do so in court, and only the courts should determine whether there are charges to answer to."
