Justices Admit GW's Amicus Curiae in the Fujimori Trial

Last week, I reported on a debate at the trial of ex-Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori over the admissibility of an amicus brief submitted to the court by George Washington University's International Human Rights Clinic. Fujimori's defense opposed the brief--which concludes that Fujimori "permitted, facilitated, and participated in" the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta Massacres--as a partisan document that would compromise the impartiality of the court.

In a unanimous ruling on Friday, the court dismissed the defense's argument and allowed the admission of the brief, explaining that it constituted a "relevant legal instrument" that would permit the court "to consider legal and social arguments that are in play" at the trial. The court stressed, however, that the brief was "non-binding" and would "not produce a detriment" to either the prosecution or the defense.

Perhaps foreshadowing Friday's ruling, the three Supreme Court justices sitting in the Fujimori trial personally accepted the amicus brief from GW's International Human Rights Clinic on June 27th and proudly stood for a photograph with the brief's author, Prof. Arturo Carrillo, and his student clinicians.

--Hayden Gore

Debating Amicus Curiae and More Dubious Testimony: the Fujimori Trial in a Nutshell

Last Wednesday, the Fujimori trial got off to a dramatic start as Cesar Nakasaki, Fujimori’s defense attorney, and Ronald Gamarra, an attorney for the family members of Fujimori’s victims, debated the admissibility of an amicus curiae brief submitted to the court from George Washington University’s International Human Rights Clinic. The debate, which lasted more than two and a half hours, provoked passionate arguments from both sides on an issue that apparently had very little precedence in Peruvian jurisprudence.

Nakasaki, who claimed he had no objection to amicus curiae in general, challenged GWU’s brief because he said it was too closely aligned with the arguments and conclusions of the prosecution. According to Nakasaki, only the court has the ability to request amicus briefs from third parties in order to clear up an issue that is beyond the court's competency. To the contrary, Nakasaki argued, the admission of a partisan amicus brief would tilt the scales of justice to one side, in this case the prosecution, and compromise the impartiality of the tribunal.

Gamarra responded that amicus briefs, in the true spirit of democracy, provide a mechanism for third party actors to take part in the judicial process and communicate to the tribunal the impact of an eventual ruling. Moreover, Gamarra thanked the court for the opportunity to debate the brief’s admissibility but said that the court itself was ultimately responsible for accepting, or not, the conclusions of an amicus brief, making the question of admissibility irrelevant.

Nakasaki, who debated with a flare greater than the substance of his arguments, seemed to lose out to Gamarra’s more prosaic reasoning. In this way, the morning’s debate represented the trial in a nutshell: Nakasaki is a wily defense lawyer and an unquestionably accomplished orator, but he is bedeviled by a weak case. If the argument over the admissibility of GWU’s brief did not sufficiently demonstrate this, the afternoon’s witness, General Juan Briones Dávila, Fujimori’s former Minister of the Interior, certainly proved the point.

Briones, called as a witness for the defense, asserted that Fujimori did not give orders to the members of his cabinet like a general might do to his subordinates in the military. Rather, Briones claimed that Fujimori gave broad directives to his cabinet ministers, who then determined the optimal strategies and tactics to carry them out. As a result, his testimony nicely insulated the former dictator from the organization of the Grupo Colina death squad and the planning of their ghastly crimes.

However, under cross-examination, Briones’s credibility completely collapsed. As Minister of the Interior, he oversaw the operations of the National Police, which investigated the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta Massacres. In spite of that, he repeatedly said that he never inquired about or was ever briefed on Colina’s role in the two atrocities. According to Briones, he continued to believe that the crimes had been committed by terrorist groups within the country, despite the fact that Colina’s involvement was popularly known and widely reported in the press from 1993 on.

There can only be two possible explanations for Briones’s ignorance about Colina: 1) he was completely incompetent as Minister of the Interior, or 2) he was lying to protect his former boss. Earlier in his testimony, he had proudly stated that he served longer in Fujimori’s cabinet than any other minister, undermining the incompetence theory. For 5 years and 5 months, he said, he had served at the pleasure of the President. Given the nature of his testimony on Wednesday, it appears that he still does.

--Hayden Gore

Photo Essay: DJPC Delegation Attends the Fujimori Trial

Lima, Peru--Yesterday, the delegation attended the Fujimori trial during the testimony of General Nicolás Hermoza Ríos, the powerful ex-Commander General of the Armed Forces during the Fujimori regime.



In his testimony, Hermoza Ríos dismissed the prosecution's suggestion that human rights violations--in particular torture, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings-- formed a fundamental part of the military's counterinsurgency strategy. He insisted that the military's primary objective in the fight against the Shining Path and the MRTA was to win over the population and that massive human rights violations were antithetical to that goal.



He then denied that the doctrine for military intelligence had changed in the early 1990s from an exclusive focus on intelligence gathering to one that included the "elimination of subversives". In reponse, the prosecution asked him to read from the military´s 1991 anti-subversion operational handbook, which clearly details the new mission: "prevent, detect, locate, identify, neutralize, and/or eliminate subversive leaders." Interestingly, Hermoza Ríos skipped over "and/or eliminate" in his reading. The court promptly corrected his omission, saying that he had receivede a blurry copy of the manual.

The general then explained that "in a war, eliminate does not mean 'to kill people.'" Rather, he said eliminate meant "remove the subversives from their context" so that a compotent tribunal could charge them for their crimes.



Asked whether military intelligence had committed excesses while implementing this strategy, he said that war itself was an excess and added a wonderful bit of dictum about hoping that "one day war would be unnecessary and that we could all solve our problems through diplomacy."

Military intelligence officers executed 25 people in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta Massacres for which Fujimori stands trial. Hermoza Ríos is currently serving out a prison sentence for corruption and embezzzlement; he will faces charges for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta Massacres this fall.

--Photos by Jonathan Moller, text by Hayden Gore

A Video Analysis of the Barrios Altos Massacre

During the month of February, I served as an international observer in the Fujimori trial during the testimony of the death squad agents that committed the two massacres for which Fujimori now stands accused. In the following video blog, I describe the November 3, 1991 Barrios Altos Massacre, using the testimony of the perpetrators to reconstruct the crime.

--Hayden Gore, http://djpcdelegation.blogspot.com/

At the Fujimtori Trial: Montesinos and Fujimori meet again--June 30, 2008

Alberto Fujimori and Vladimiro Montesinos, two legendary partners in state-sponsored crime, finally reunite after an eight year lapse. The audience was anxious for this long-awaited encounter. It was unknown what Vladimiro would reveal, if he spoke at all. Since he is currently being prosecuted in separate judicial proceedings that have not concluded he is afforded the right to remain silent in order to avoid self-incrimination. Vladimiro, a lawyer himself, was well aware of this right but chose to proceed. It was at this point that the drama, or what appeared to be a scene from a nightly telenovela, began.

Throughout the Public Prosecutor’s interrogation, Vladimiro remained overwhelmingly arrogant. His dramatic presentation appeared to complicate and in some cases compromise the role of the prosecutor. In general, Vladimiro’s irrelevant responses could be characterized as overly competent legal determinations or sarcastic and disrespectful. In other occasions he claimed that national security could not be compromised and thus revealing the de-classified information was unwarranted. To reinforce the decision to uphold security interests he consistently referenced legal operations within the United States.

The Public Prosecutor’s non-authoritarian interrogation style was not successful in taking the reigns of the court room or in controlling the witness. Rather, the court room remained almost memorized by Vladimiro’s audacity and outbursts. The novella-like drama that took place did not necessarily liberate Fujimori or assist him. However, no blame was directed towards this old friend who would likely reciprocate silence about mutually incriminatory secrets. The friendly, non-verbal exchanges between the former governmental officials confirmed for many the suspicion that these two individuals remained associates.

As the interrogation began with excitement—it ended with relative disappointment. Before the Barrios Altos and Cantuta massacres were mentioned, Vladimiro abruptly announced that he had concluded for the day. He refused to answer any further line of questioning by invoking his right to remain silent. The court room was briefly startled by this communication but some type of dramatization or surprise was expected by many in attendance. The tribunal judges communicated their disappointment with the witness’ swift decision to end the interrogation but this was the extent of the court's capabilities. The relative importance of Vladimiro’s questionable testimony will most certainly not be known for some time but it left the Peruvian public with much to ponder.

Vladimiro Montesinos Takes the Witness Stand in Fujimori Trial

Yesterday, Vladimiro Montesinos, Alberto Fujimori's intelligence chief and right-hand man, took the witness stand in the trial of the former Peruvian dictator. It was the first time that Fujimori and Montesinos had seen each other since they both fled the country--Montesinos to Venezuela, Fujimori to Japan--in the midst of a massive corruption scandal sparked by Montesinos's videotaped payoffs to opposition party leaders.

Due to his close governing relationship with Fujimori (the two were once known as the "siamese twins") and recent critical statements he made against his former boss, Montesinos's appearance in front of the court was one of the most anticipated of the trial. In his testimony, however, Montesinos--who was alternately described as "loquacious and risible"--attempted to exculpate Fujimori by asserting that he had "no responsibility" for the crimes involved in the case.

You can click here to read the Washington Post's piece on Montesinos's testimony.

Michelle Doherty, a colleague from DJPC and a co-facilitator for the delegation, was present in the courtroom as an international observer. Her firsthand report is forthcoming!

Suggested Reading: Peruvian Truth Commission Report

On the blog, I have included a link to the summary of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Final Report in English. The summary, a concise 29-page history of the country's 20-year internal armed conflict, provides a comprehensive introduction to the primary actors in the conflict (the Shining Path, MRTA, the Armed Forces, and the police), as well as a description of the successes and failures of the three governments in power from 1980 to 2000.

The report is probably the most important single document you can read to understand the context of the armed conflict, the nature of the violence in Ayacucho, and the human rights abuses involved in the Fujimori trial. You can click here to access the report or find it in the "Important Links" section on the right hand side of this blog.

(The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed in June 2001--just 7 months after Fujimori's ignominious resignation and exile in Japan--and released its final report two years later in August 2003.)

--Hayden

Unearthing Peru's Largest Mass Grave in Ayacucho

The BBC published a story last week about the unearthing of Peru's largest mass grave from the 20-year internal armed conflict. The Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) is carrying out the exhumation in Putis, an abandoned Andean village in the province of Ayacucho. While in Ayacucho, we will meet with EPAF to learn about their work documenting the atrocities from the armed conflict and their efforts to return the remains of the victims to their families. Click here to read the article.

--Hayden