New Yorker who aided Peru rebels freed

Activist Lori Berenson walked out of prison with a smile on her face Thursday after serving three-quarters of a 20-year sentence for aiding leftist rebels.

The 40-year-old New Yorker squeezed through a police cordon holding back a mob of reporters at Santa Monica women’s prison  and got into a black sedan that her husband and attorney, Anibal Apari, drove to the Lima apartment where she is to reside.   

Their son, Salvador, who has been living with his mother since his birth a year ago, was taken to the apartment separately by Berenson’s parents. They flew in from New York City the previous
night, entered the prison before Berenson’s release.

Berenson never denounced the leftist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
Movement, or MRTA, of which she was convicted of collaborating. Prosecutors said she had helped the group plot a takeover of  Peru’s Congress that never happened.   

But documents that her defense team provided to the judge who granted her parole Tuesday said Berenson had “recognized she committed errors” by getting involved with the rebels. She said Berenson must stay in Lima until her sentence ends in November 2015.

Peru’s justice minister, Victor Garcia, told the Radioprogramas network Thursday that the Cabinet could decide to commute the sentence and expel Berenson.

“This is a really nasty situation for Peruvians,” Garcia said, suggesting the government was not necessarily that pleased  Berenson had the legal option of being deported.   

It was unclear whether any other legal problems could complicate Berenson’s eventual return to the United States. U.S. Embassy spokesman James Fennell said he could not comment on the case  due to privacy laws.
   

Many Peruvians are unhappy that Berenson was paroled.

“I don’t know whose idea it was to put this terrorist here as a neighbor,” said Rene Vela, an elderly woman who lives in the building in the Miraflores neighborhood where Berenson’s parents had childproofed the apartment for her.

The judge who paroled Berenson said she had “completed re-education, rehabilitation and re-socialization” and demonstrated “positive behavior.”

Berenson has long maintained she was a political prisoner and not a terrorist. She shouted to reporters in her first public appearance after her November 1995 arrest: “There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement.”

Berenson’s parole request said she planned to work as a translator and a dessert chef.

Her father, Mark, said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press before his daughter’s release that he was anxious about her health, particularly her back, for which she underwent a seven-hour surgery in November.

Her son was delivered by Caesarean section in May 2009 because of the woman’s degenerative back ailment, which Mark Berenson attributed to lifting 40-pound sacks of flour in the bakery she ran while at Huacariz prison, 530 miles northeast of Peru’s capital, Lima.

She was transferred to the Lima prison in January 2009 and gave birth four months later.

Berenson’s work at the bakery was cited as an example of her good behavior during the parole hearing.

“Her health is not good,” Mark Berenson said. “All the pains came back and the surgeon saw her two weeks ago and he’s very unhappy.

“He wants her to go through a million more tests because they’re worried about potential nerve damage,” he added. “You see her and her posture is twisted.”