Peru Court Orders American Lori Berenson Back to Jail

LIMA, Peru (Aug. 18) -- Lori Berenson, a native New Yorker arrested in 1995 and later convicted of aiding a leftist insurgency, turned herself in to Peruvian authorities today after being ordered to return to jail.

Local television station Canal N reported that she handed herself over at the U.S. Embassy in Lima. "She's calm. She is a very strong woman," her husband and lawyer, Anibal Apari, said, according to The Associated Press. "She is going to return to jail with her baby." Berenson's son, Salvador, was born in prison 15 months ago.

Berenson was released on parole in May for good behavior after serving nearly 15 years of a 20-year sentence for collaborating with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, a leftist guerrilla group.

Since then, amid public outcry about her release, a panel of judges ruled Berenson should not have been freed, since police failed to confirm the Lima address where she would serve her parole. She could be released from prison again if the issue is resolved.

Her parole had stirred up emotion in a country still reeling from a conflict that killed 69,000 people. The MRTA was active in the 1980s and '90s, at the same time a larger Maoist insurgent group, the Shining Path, attempted to topple the government. Tens of thousands were arrested on terrorism-related charges.

Upon her release in May, Berenson, 40, was met outside her Lima home by dozens of protesters demanding her immediate expulsion from the country. Public controversy further flared in July when the daily newspaper Expreso reported that Peru's government paid her parents $30,000 as compensation because the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled she was originally tried by an illegal military court.

Since being paroled, Berenson has been living in an apartment in Miraflores, an upscale section of Lima, waiting for President Alan Garcia to rule on her request for a pardon, which would allow her to return to the U.S. with her son.

Peru's prime minister, Javier Velasquez, said the federal government would not challenge the court's ruling. "In Peru the justice system is autonomous, and as part of developing our democratic institutions, we have to respect the court's decision," he said Wednesday at a press conference.

A student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming a social activist in Latin America, Berenson was arrested on a bus in Peru in 1995 and charged with belonging to the MRTA.

During a televised court hearing Monday, Berenson made a rare public statement in which she publicly apologized for working with the MRTA.

"Yes, I collaborated with the MRTA. I was never a leader or a militant. I never participated in violent or bloody acts. I never killed anybody," she told a panel of judges. "If my participation contributed to societal violence, I am very sorry for this," she said at the hearing.