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Dr. Alejandro Toledo Manrique
President of the Republic of Peru
El Despacho Presidencial
Plaza Mayor s/n
Lima, Peru

Dear President Toledo,

I respectfully write to express our deep concern over the repeated failure of the Peruvian Ministry of Defense to provide information to prosecutors and courts investigating human rights violations concerning the identity of military personnel stationed in bases or participating in counter-insurgency operations in specific periods during the armed conflict in Peru.

We strongly urge you to ensure that the Ministry of Defense and the armed forces fully cooperate with civilian judicial authorities and provide information relevant for the investigation of human rights violations.

In recent statements regarding allegations involving the presidential candidate Ollanta Humala, the Minister of Defense, Marciano Rengifo, has publicly denied having information requested by prosecutors, in particular details of the officers stationed at the Madre Mia base, in Tocache, San Martín. Identification of these officers is apparently complicated by the fact that during the armed conflict they routinely used aliases as a security protection. Mr. Humala is suspected of having used the name “Captain Carlos,” the alias of an officer accused of serious human rights crimes. He admits having gone by the name “Carlos,” but claims that he has been confused with another “Carlos.”

In recent interviews, the Minister has denied categorically that the army used aliases as policy. He has insisted that their use was completely informal and that no written record was kept of them. Successive Ministers of Defense have consistently denied that the armed forces have information that is vital to enable prosecutors and judges to establish the identity of those who participated in military operations in which grave human rights violations took place. Over the years Human Rights Watch has come to regard such assertions by successive Ministers of Defense with mounting skepticism, since they not only defy common sense but frequently fail to take into account investigations that military authorities have themselves conducted.

We are particularly concerned about the reports aired on the program La Ventana Indiscreta in February, according to which documents from Humala’s personal service record (“legajo personal”) referring to his combat experiences in 1992 had been removed before the file was sent to the Minister of Defense. These reports, which have now been confirmed by the Minister, indicate a deliberate attempt to obstruct justice.

In multiple cases over the years Human Rights Watch has found that investigations conducted by military prosecutors turned up vital information on the identity of participants in military operations, indicating that in many cases such information does in fact exist. For example, while the Minister claims, in this case, that the use of aliases was purely informal and that no record was kept of them, Human Rights Watch has seen the declaration of an army major who was interviewed in November 1992 by a military officer investigating drug-trafficking allegations at the base where Mr. Humala was stationed. In his declaration, the officer, Maj. Jorge Flores Tello, said to be the immediate superior of Humala, gave the names and aliases of several officers at the base, including that of Humala, whom he identified as “Humala Tasso, Ollanta, ‘Carlos’.”

Human Rights Watch has other documents showing that official records were kept of army pseudonyms. Two memos signed in 1994 by Gen. Alfredo Rodríguez Riveros, then general commander of the Frente Huallaga, prove that he possessed information on the pseudonyms used by soldiers under his command. In the first memo (the date and number of which are indistinct) General Rodríguez replied to a request from Dr. Senen Ramos Giles, the Ad-Hoc Prosecutor investigating human rights violations that occurred during “Operation Aries,” for the real identity of four officers known only by their pseudonyms: “Gastón,” “Camilo,” “Manzur” and “Carlos.” General Rodríguez stated that this information was secret and he could not provide it. However, in the second document, also addressed to Dr. Ramos, dated December 1, 1994, General Rodríguez supplied the real names of two officers who went by the pseudonyms “Pepe” and “Lozada.”

A second example is the case of Bernabé Baldeón García, who was tortured to death by members of an Ayacucho military patrol in September 1990. Baldeón’s son, Crispin Baldeón, spent twelve fruitless years trying to find the real people behind the pseudonyms of his father’s killers, in particular a certain "J. Morán," who was believed to have commanded the army base at Accomarca. In September 2002, a ministry of defense official wrote to the Peruvian branch of the American Association of Jurists to inform them that the command of the Second Military Region had found no records in its files of the pseudonym or the real name of the officers. But, two weeks later, an inspector from the same military region stated in a memo to army headquarters in Lima that ninety pseudonyms had been found in personnel records at the army base at Cangallo which was responsible for the province of Vilcashuaman, where the abuses occurred. He identified Morán as being in reality Lt. José Urbina Carrasco, a cavalry officer still in active service at the time. Urbina now faces charges of torture resulting in death.

Given these examples, blanket denials that records exist of the real identity of officers stationed in emergency zones lack all credibility and seem intended to cover up abuses and shield those responsible.

We are not, of course, in a position to state that such records exist in all cases. Yet, if in a particular case there are indeed no records or they were lost or destroyed, it should be possible for the armed forces to obtain the required information by conducting a simple investigation, such as by interviewing officers known to have been stationed at the time at the base in question. Many of the officers posted at the counterinsurgency base 313 in Tingo María in 1992 were listed, with their signatures, in the army drug-trafficking investigation mentioned above. The Minister of Defense should provide a full list of their names to the prosecutor to enable him to question them and thereby confirm the real identity and responsibilities of the officer known as “Carlos.”

The investigations to which I refer above were conducted because of intense political pressure on the military at the time to respond to allegations involving egregious human rights violations. As the Truth Commission noted, however, most of the investigations conducted by military courts terminated in the acquittal of the officers implicated. It was only with the transfer of these cases to civilian courts that a possibility emerged for the first time that those responsible might be finally brought to justice. Since then the military have consistently failed to cooperate.

A serious effort to obtain this information and collaborate with the prosecutors and the courts in the investigation of human rights violations is an obligation of the armed forces given the State’s responsibility to establish the truth and bring to justice those responsible for them. This applies not only to the current allegations against Humala, but to the hundreds of cases now under investigation by civilian courts and prosecutors, with which the ministry of defense and the armed forces continue to deny effective cooperation.

I appreciate your attention to this matter.

Respectfully,

José Miguel Vivanco
Executive Director, Americas Division

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