American Lori Berenson Returns to Peruvian Prison After Parole Is Revoked
Lori Berenson, who was released from a Peruvian jail in May after serving 14 1/2 years for aiding Marxist rebels, turned herself in to police today after a Peruvian court suspended a parole order for the U.S. national.
Berenson, 40, was in the U.S. Embassy in Lima for a pre- arranged meeting when she heard about the court ruling, embassy spokesman James Fennell said in an e-mailed statement.
The court suspended Berenson’s parole order because before she was released, police had failed to visit the apartment in Lima where she was planning to live, as required by law, court spokesman Guillermo Gonzales said in a phone interview.
Gonzales contradicted comments by Deputy Justice Minister Luis Marill, who said in an interview with Lima-based Canal N that the appeals court had decided Berenson wasn’t entitled to parole because she hadn’t served three-quarters of her 20-year sentence. The government appealed the May parole order at a hearing two days ago.
The judge in the case, Jessica Leon, will review Berenson’s request for parole again once police have visited her apartment, Gonzales said.
“Once that’s done, the judge could issue a new resolution granting her parole, or it could be revoked,” Gonzales said. “The new resolution could be appealed” by the government, he said.
Berenson, a New York native and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, had requested that she be allowed to return to the U.S.
Berenson was sentenced to life in prison by a military court after her capture in 1995 for being a member of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The sentence was later nullified by the military supreme court and she was tried and sentenced by a civilian court to 20 years in 2001 for helping plan an attack on Peru’s Congress, a charge she denied.
A call to Berenson’s family in New York wasn’t immediately returned. Contact information for her lawyer in Peru wasn’t available.
To contact the reporter on this story: John Quigley in Lima at jquigley8@bloomberg.net
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