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The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on December 17, 1996 in Lima, Peru, when fourteen members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) took hostage hundreds of high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives who were attending a party in celebration of Emperor Akihito's 63rd birthday at the home of Japanese ambassador Morihisha Aoki.^[1]. In April of the following year, the hostages were freed in a daring raid by Peruvian Armed Forces commandos, during which one hostage and all the MTRA militants died. While the operation was heralded by President Alberto Fujimori, who used it strengthen his image of being "tough on terrorism", it later emerged that a number the Emerrtistas had been executed after they had surrendered, and this revelation tainted the affair. Fujimori later faced murder charges because of the executions.

Antecedents

In the years following the capture in 1992 of Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán and the rest of the group's leadership, terrorist activity declined in Peru; the country appeared to have finally put behind it the violence which had plagued it for some fifteen years. When news spread of the daring assault, which propelled the MTRA into the world spotlight, the country emitted a collective groan. The Lima Stock Exchange was forced to close three hours early because domestic stocks plummeted. One newspaper political columnist said, "It is a setback of at least four years. We've returned to being a country subject to terror." The news came at a particularly bad moment for Fujimori, who had taken the credit for restoring peace to the country. All year, his popularity had been dropping steadily, from a high of 75 percent in January 1996 to a figure of about 40 percent in December. Fujimori's economic program has failed to produce jobs. The Peruvian economy has been stagnant all year after good growth in years 1994 and 1995. [1] The surprise attack was the most spectacular action organized by the MRTA in its 15-year history. The militants had been able to pass unnoticed, inside an ambulance and heavily armed, through a cordon of more than three-hundred police officers and bodyguards surrounding the residence.

Demands

In the days immediately following the takeover, the Red Cross acted as an intermediary between the government and the guerrillas. Among the hostages were high officials of Peru’s security forces, including the chief of Peru's anti-terrorist police, DINCOTE, Maximo Rivera and former chief Carlos Dominguez. Other hostages included Alejandro Toledo, the current president of Peru, and Javier Diez Canseco, a the prominent Peruvian congressmen. The twenty-four Japanese hostages included the younger brother of Fujimori. The leader of the MTRA militants was identified as 43-year-old Nestor Cerpa.

The rebels made a series of demands, the most important of which was the release of some four-hundred of their comrades from prisons around Peru and revision of the government's free-market reforms. MTRA also singled out for criticism Japan's foreign assistance program in Peru, arguing that this aid benefits only a narrow segment of society. [2]

Javier Diez Canseco was among 38 men who were released shortly after. He defended the terrorists and called for the government to negotiate a settlement. Canseco said that the hostage-takers are "18 to 20 years old, maybe 21 ... They're a group of special forces, commandos. I think they're young men who want to live. They don't want to die." [3]

Fujimori was visibly shaken by the bold attack. Not only did suggest complacency on the part of security, it has exposed Peru's human rights violations to international scrutiny [4]

Negotiations

On 22 December, Fujimori made his first public announcement on the hostage-taking. In a televised four-minute speech, he condemned the assailants at the Japanese ambassador's residence, calling the MRTA assault "repugnant" and totally rejected the demands of the terrorists. Fujimori did not rule out an armed rescue attempt, but said that he was willing to explore a peaceful solution to the situation. Fujimori made his speech shortly after MRTA leader Nestor Cerpa announced that he would gradually release any hostages who were not connected to the Peruvian government. [5] During the months that followed, the rebels would release all the female hostages and all but seventy-two of the men.

Speculation circulated that Peru was turning to foreign governments for assistance, but Fujimori publicly indicated that he did not need help from foreign security advisors. Upon being freed, Alejandro Toledo, he said that what the Emerrtistas really wanted was an amnesty that would allow its members to participate in public life. He said that any attempt to rescue the hostages by force would be "insane", as they were "armed to the teeth." Rooms in the building, he said, were wired with explosives, as well as the roof. He added that the terrorists had anti-tank weapons and wore backpacks that were filled with explosives that could be detonated by pulling a cord on their chest. [6] The Japanese ambassador's residence had also been converted into a fortress by the Japanese government. A copy of Tara, Scarlet O'Hara's home in the movie Gone with the Wind that was built by a Peruvian millionaire to humor his whimsical wife, the house was surrounded by a 12-feet wall, grates on all windows, bullet-proof glass in many windows, and doors built to withstand the impact of a grenade. It was, therefore, an easy site to defend from the inside.

In search for a "peaceful solution", Fujimori appointed a team to hold talks with the MRTA, including the Canadian ambassador who had briefly been a hostage, Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani, and a Red Cross official. Fujimori even talked with Fidel Castro, raising media speculation that a deal was being worked out to let the MRTA militants go to Cuba as political exiles. On Christmas Eve, Archbishop Cipriani was allowed into the occupied embassy to celebrate Mass. Once inside, he used the opportunity to speak not only with the hostages, but also with the MRTA rebels, and especially with the guerrilla leader, Nestor Cerpa Cartolini. Witnesses report that Cerpa was struck by the frank, down-to-earth style of the Archbishop of Ayacucho. Although Cipriani was known for his strong opposition to terrorism, Cerpa decided at that moment that he wanted this man on the negotiating team. [7]

In the view of analysts in Lima, the negotiations that accompanied the hostage crisis, which continued for 126 days, represent a classic example of miscalculation on both sides.

When the talks began, the government believed that Cerpa was motivated by selfish interests--that he was eager to free the top MRTA leaders because they knew the numbers of the international bank accounts in which the guerrilla group had secured its funds. From that perspective, they reasoned to the conclusion that Cerpa could be persuaded to free the hostages and leave the embassy if they offered him a safe trip to Cuba and a tempting financial settlement. It was a month before the government began to take seriously the warning that Cerpa had given: "If I had wanted to leave [the country], I could have found an easier way than taking an embassy!"

But it was Cerpa himself who fell prey to a more dramatic--ultimately fatal--miscalculation. After Peruvian soldiers stormed the embassy on April 22, rescuing the hostages and killing the entire commando squadron, other sources within MRTA revealed that the rebels had become confident and relaxed, fully believing that Fujimori had no choice but to negotiate a solution. As one MRTA source put it: "We were confident that the presence of a Church representative, the European sympathy for our cause, and the reluctance of Japan to allow a military operation on its territory [the grounds of the embassy] would tie Fujimori's arms to prevent any violent initiative."

Indeed a notebook kept by Cerpa, which was discovered in the embassy after the military raid, showed that he was sure Fujimori would accept his final offer: a scaled-back demand for the release of 20 MRTA leaders, including Cerpa's wife, Nancy Gilvonio, and Lori Berenson, the New York native who had been convicted of involvement in the guerrilla effort. According to Colonel Antonio Miyashiro, a former hostage and an expert in terrorism, "Cerpa and his followers did not take into consideration that the Europeans were not important players in the case, that US support was secured, and that Japan would accept any solution which would guarantee the security of all Japanese hostages."

In early February, a new squadron of Peruvian troops with heavy equipment took over the embassy vigil. They played loud military music and made provocative gestures to the rebels who unleashed a burst of gunfire. This prompted Japan’s prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, to publicly urge Peru not to take any unnecessary risks which could endanger the hostages’ lives. Japanese leaders pressured Fujimori to reach some sort of negotiated settlement with the Tupac Amaru rebels in order to ensure the hostages' safe release. Fujimori subsequently met with Hashimoto in Canada. The two leaders announced that they were in agreement on how to handle the hostage situation but provided few details. [8]

On February 10, Fujimori travelled to London, where he announced that the purpose of his trip was to "find a country that would give asylum to the MRTA group". Observers noted that his request that the MRTA group be given political asylum contradicted his formerly stated position that the MRTA were not guerillas but terrorists. On the eve of his arrival, the Times referred to him as a "dictator" and berated "his barbaric and medieval dungeons." The next day, Fujimori declared that "Peruvian prisons are built in accordance with international standards for terrorists." He also attended business meetings which he described to his domestic audience as an "exercise in reassuring the international investors." [9]

"Any negotiation with terrorists," pointed out political analyst Patricio Ricketts, "would dramatically erode his credibility." In fact, according to an opinion poll carried out by the Apoyo agency just a few days before the embassy was recovered, 79 percent of Peruvians were opposed to the release of MRTA prisoners--although another a clear majority--68 percent--were also opposed to a violent intervention.

The Catholic Church leadership, always among the most influential players in Peruvian affairs, took the same perspective. Cardinal Augusto Vargas Alzamora of Lima, the president of the Peruvian bishops' conference, repeated insistently that "we pray and we encourage all Peruvians to pray for a fast, fair, and peaceful solution." Nevertheless, after the government offered a safe trip to Cuba, the payment of a ransom, and the possibility of reviewing the harsh conditions in which MRTA prisoners were living, Cardinal Vargas visited the embassy and--first in a private meeting with Cerpa, then again in front of the media outside the embassy--demanded that the guerrillas accept the government offer and free the hostages. "The government can't cede more," the cardinal said; "otherwise it would go against the legal system that sustains our democracy." [10]

In February, the Peruvian newspaper La República reported the existence of a secret government "intervention plan," involving the direct participation of U.S. military forces. The plan was reportedly devised by Peru's Army Intelligence Agency and submitted to Fujimori. On February 17, The New York Times wrote: "United States participation in the assault is crucial, according to the plan, which said that the commandos would come from the Peruvian Army's School of Commandos and the United States Southern Command, based in Panama." http://rwor.org/a/v19/905-09/905/peru.htm

The MRTA called off the talks with the government in March when they reported hearing loud noises coming from beneath the floor of the ambassador's residence. Peruvian newspapers confirmed the MRTA suspicions, reporting that the police were digging tunnels underneath the building. The police tried to cover up the noise from the digging by playing loud music over loudspeakers and carrying out noisy tank maneuvers through the nearby streets. [11]

It subsequently became apparent that the negotiations were a ruse for buying time. It appeared Fujimori's plans for a military assault, not MRTA's "unwillingness to negotiate," that led to the breakdown of talks. According to the New York Times, the Canadian ambassador himself admitted that Fujimori's negotiating team "had served as little more than a cover to give [Fujimori] time to put in place the physical and political elements of a raid." [[12]]

The raid

On April 22, 1997, a team of 140 commandos, given the name Chavín de Huántar, mounted an dramatic raid on the ambassador's residence. Fourteen MTRA rebels, one hostage, and two soldiers died in the assault.

In preparation for the raid, one of the hostages, Admiral Luis Gianpetri of the Peruvian Navy, who was an expert in intelligence and command operations, was provided with a tiny radio set and given encrypted instructions ordering him to warn the hostages ten minutes before the military operation began, telling them to stay as far as possible away from the MRTA members. Light-colored clothes were systematically ferried in to the hostages, so that they could be easily distinguished from the dark-clad guerrillas. Cerpa himself unwittingly helped with this part of the project when, hearing sounds that made him suspect that a tunnel was being dug, he ordered the hostages all put on the second floor.

In addition, sophisticated miniature microphones and video cameras had been smuggled into the residence, concealed in books, water bottles, and table games. Gianpetri and other military officers among the hostages were given the responsibility for placing these devices in secure locations around the house. Eavesdropping on the MRTA commandos with the help of these high-tech devices, military planners observed that the guerrillas had organized their security carefully, and were particularly alert during the night hours. Early every afternoon, eight of the MRTA members--including the top four trained leaders--played a game of indoor soccer for about one hour,

At 15:23 in the afternoon, operation Chavin de Huantar began. Three charges exploded nearly simultaneously in three different rooms on the first floor. The first explosion hit in the middle of the room were the soccer game was being held, immediately killing three terrorists--two of the men who had been involved in the game, and one of the girls watching from the sidelines. From the hole created by that blast and the other two explosions, 30 commandos stormed into the building, chasing the surviving MRTA members in order to stop them before they reached the second floor.

Two other moves were made simultaneously with the explosion. In the first, 20 commandos launched a direct assault on the front door in order to join their comrades inside the waiting room, where the main staircase to the second floor was located. On their way in, they found the two other female MRTA guerrillas guarding the front door. The girls dropped their weapons and shouted "we surrender," but it was too late; they were cut down by the rushing commandos. Behind the first wave of troops storming the door, another group of soldiers came carrying ladders, which they placed against the rear walls of the building.

In the final prong of the coordinated attack, another group of commandos emerged from the other two tunnels, which had reached the back yard of the embassy residence. These soldiers quickly scaled the ladders which had been placed for them. Their tasks were to blow out a grenade-proof door on the second floor, through which the hostages would be evacuated, and to make two holes in the roof so that they could kill the MRTA members upstairs before they had time to kill the hostages.

As the commandos tore the Tupac Amaru rebel flag from the roof of the embassy, Fujimori joined some of the former hostages in singing the national anthem. [13] Shortly thereafter a beaming Fujimori was seen speeding through Lima in a bus packed with freed hostages. [14] Peruvian TV also showed Fujimori striding among the dead guerrillas. Some of the bodies were mutilated, with arms and legs chopped off. [15] The outcome was seen as a triumph and bolstered his hard-line stance against unpopular leftist groups. Fujimori's popularity ratings quickly doubled to nearly 70 percent and he was acclaimed a national hero. [16] "You had to live in the climate of the time. The operation was so successful that there was no opposition. Peruvians loved it," said historian Luis Jochamowitz, author of a biography of Fujimori. Reflecting on the raid a few days afterward, Antonio Cisneros, a leading poet, said it had given Peruvians "a little bit of dignity. Nobody expected this efficiency, this speed. In military terms it was a First World job, not Third World," he said. [17]

Fujimori took personal credit for the operation. In an interview with the December 17, 1997, edition of El Comercio, Fujimori stated that shortly after the embassy residence was seized, that he, the National Intelligence Service headed by Julio Salazar and Vladimiro Montesinos, and the Joint Command of the Armed Forces under Army Commander General Nicolás de Bari Hermoza Rios had planned the operation. [18]] Fujimori later demonstrated to the media the model of the ambassador's residence which was used to prepare the rescue operation, which included the underground tunnels from adjacent houses used by commandos to enter the building. [19]

Reports emerged that the US and Israel had helped the Peruvian military in preparing for the raid. US State Department spokesperson Nicolas Burns maintained that the US government had no direct participation in the assault. But former FBI agent Bob Taubert told CNN News on April 23 that had trained Peruvian troops the previous December at an undisclosed location in the United States. It was "money well spent," he said. Commenting that the Peruvian commandos performed precisely as he had trained them for such an action, Taubert said he was "very proud." [20]

The CIA had no comment when asked if it had given intelligence assistance to the Peruvian military in preparation for the raid, but observers pointed out that the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were deeply involved in the counterinsurgency operations of the Peruvian military and that CIA had a direct hand in the massive search by the Peruvian secret police that led to the 1992 capture of Shining Path capo Abimael Guzmán [21]

When the operation was over, the bodies of the Emerrtistas were removed by military prosecutors; representatives from the Attorney General’s Office were not permitted entry. The corpses were not taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for the autopsy required by law. Rather, the bodies were taken instead to the morgue at the Police Hospital. It was there that the autopsies would be performed. The autopsy reports were kept secret until 2001. Next of kin of the deceased were not allowed to be present for the identification of the bodies and the autopsies. The bodies were buried in secrecy in various cemeteries throughout Lima. The mother of one of the victims, Eligia Rodriguez Bustamante, and the Deputy Director of APRODEH asked the Attorney General’s Office to take the necessary steps to identify those who died when the ambassador’s residence was retaken, but the Attorney General’s Office conceded its jurisdiction to identify the deceased members of the MRTA, handing it over to the military justice system instead. [22] The treatment of the bodies of the dead guerillas raised troubling questions. If the MRTA had no popular support, why did Fujimori refuse to let families bury the dead guerrillas? Why did the government instead secretly bury them in unmarked graves?

International reaction

In the days following the assault, there were demonstrations in several countries in protest the MRTA deaths. On April 25, hundreds protested at the Peruvian Embassy in Santiago, Chile. Riot police tear gassed demonstrators and pushed them to the ground outside the embassy. Protesters told television reporters, "We absolutely reject these acts of such cruelty, which should never happen again."

In Mexico City on April 23, scores of people gathered to protest at the Peruvian Embassy. Demonstrators hurled red paint and tomatoes at the building, shouting, "Fujimori murderer" and "Latin America is in mourning."

In the US, at an April 27 rally in Philadelphia against Clinton's cutbacks, Monica Ruiz told 5,000 demonstrators: "The truth is that these young MRTA revolutionaries were fighting for the same things we are fighting for and against the same enemy. Is it a surprise that the Clinton administration aids and abets the Peruvian government when it muzzles the voice of dissent by using police terror? Are we surprised that Clinton supports a government that enriches a small group of wealthy families in Peru at the expense of 80 percent of the population who live in utter poverty? After all, he is throwing millions of poor people, disabled children and elderly people on the streets here to beg for charity."

In an interview in on April 24 edition of the German newspaper Junge Welt, MRTA spokesperson Norma Velasco assessed the developments leading up to the murderous raid. "The goal of the MRTA unit was not to murder the embassy prisoners," she said. Rather, the guerrillas wanted to win their demands to free the 450 MRTA prisoners held in Peru's prisons. "We had no illusions" that Fujimori wanted a peaceful solution, Velasco said. But "we did have some bit of hope that international public opinion in many countries would increase pressure on the Peruvian government and force them to give in." Alluding to the underlying economic conditions of the country, she observed: "A vast segment of the population still suffers from poverty, hunger and a lack of proper medical care, and these problems are increasing. The end of the crisis at the ambassador's residence showed that Fujimori exclusively relies on military means."

The New York Times on April 28 commented on the regime's dependency on the military, describing Fujimori, Montesinos and armed forces head Gen. Nicolas Hermoza Rios as "Peru's ruling troika." Despite the secrecy, people discovered where MRTA leader Nestor Cerpa body wis buried, and his grave in a hillside cemetery in the impoverished pueblo joven of Villa Maria del Triunfo subsequently became a rallying point for popular expressions of anger. A woman by Cerpa's grave told a New York Times reporter: "`He fought for us, for the poor. Look at how we live. Look at how we die." Another said: "He was not a terrorist. He was a revolutionary." [23]

Aftermath

Doubts about the official version of events soon began to arise, however. One Japanese hostage, Hidetaka Ogura, who published a book in 2000 on the ordeal, former first secretary of the Japanese Embassy, stated that he saw Eduardo Cruz ("Tito") shortly after the commandos stormed the building, tied up in the garden. Cruz was turned alive over to Colonel Jesús Zamudio Aliaga, but along with the others he was later reported as having died during the assault. Another witness, the ex-minister of Agriculture, Rodolfo Muñante, declared in an interview eight hours after being free that he heard one rebel shout "I surrender" and take off his vest with grenades and turn himself over. But later Muñante denied having said this. [24] Another hostage, Maximo Rivera, then head of Peru's anti-terrorism police, said recently he had heard similar accounts from other hostages after the raid. [25]

The truth about what happened during the rescue operation remained secret until the fall of the Fujimori regime. However, suggestions that surrendered MRTA members had been executed extrajudicially began to circulate not long after the rescue operation. On December 18, 2000, El Comercio published a story in which the hostage Hidetaka Ogura flatly stated that he and other hostages saw three of the MRTA rebels captured alive, one of which was “Tito.” Media reports also discussed a possible breach of international practices on taking of prisoners, committed on what was seen as Japanese sovereign soil and speculated that if charged, Fujimori could face prosecution in Japan. [26]

Legal proceedings

On January 2, 2001, APRODEH filed a criminal complaint on behalf of MRTA family members against Alberto Fujimori, Vladimiro Montesinos, Nicolás De Bari Hermoza Ríos, Julio Salazar Monroe and anyone else found to be guilty of the crime of the qualified homicide of Eduardo Nicolás Crúz Sánchez and two other MRTA members. Special Provincial Prosecutor Richard Saavedra was put in charge of the preliminary inquiry into the complaint. Non-commissioned National Police officers Raúl Robles Reynoso and Marcial Teodorico Torres Arteaga corroborated Hidetaka Ogura testimony, telling investigators that they took Eduardo Cruz Sánchez alive, as he was attempting to get away by mingling with the hostages when they were at the house in back of the Japanese Ambassador’s residence.

In an inteview in March, assistant state attorney Ronald Gamarra told CPN radio that Fujimori should face murder charges over the alleged executions. "(We have) information regarding how post-mortems were conducted on the dead MRTA rebels, which in opinion could corroborate accusations of extrajudicial killings." He said unofficial post-mortems plus reports by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department and rights groups, suggested rebels had been executed with a shot in the head. The state prosecutors ordered the exhumation of the rebels' bodies. [27]

Fujimori's defenders say the Tupac Amaru investigation is just another attempt by political enemies to destroy his legacy. Not giving in to terrorist blackmail is the only good thing remaining from the previous government, said Carlos Blanco, an independent congressman and one of the hostages. And now they want to destroy that like everything else. [28]

Prosecutors are acting on remarks from former Japanese Embassy political attache Hidetaka Ogura, a hostage who published a book last year about the ordeal.

The bodies of the deceased MRTAs were exhumed and examined by forensic physicians and forensic anthropologists, experts from the Institute of Forensic Medicine, from the Criminology Division of the National Police and from the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team, some of whom have served as experts for the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Another member of the group was a foreign expert, Dr. Clyde Snow. Statements were taken from various officers who took part in the rescue operation and from some of the rescued hostages.

The examination done by the forensic anthropologists and forensic physicians revealed that Cruz Sánchez had been shot once in the back of his neck, while in a defenseless posture vis-à-vis his assailant. [29] Other forensic examinations established that eight of the rebels were apparently shot in the head after capture or while defenseless because of injuries.

On May 13, 2002, judge Cecilia Polack Boluarte warrants for the arrest of eleven senior army officers who participated in the 1997 raid. The warrants allow the accused to be held for fifteen days before formal charges are filed.

The judge's decision provoked an outcry; the ministers of defense, justice and the interior have all criticized the arrest orders. However, Attorney General Nelly Calderón supported the measure. In a statement made on May 20, 2002, to Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) she said: “We prosecutors are supporting the action taken by prosecutor Saavedra, because he has done a careful investigation (and) unfortunately the evidence suggests culpability. That evidence has to be collated to determine what degree of responsibility each arrested officer bears."

On May 16, two amnesty proposals were announced in congressional committees, one submitted by thePopular American Revolutionary Alliance party (APRA) of former president Alan García, the other by the National Unity party (UN). The UN bill "grants amnesty" to army Gen. José Williams Zapata, who headed up the operation, and to the "official personnel who participated in the freeing and rescue of the hostages. Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch strongly protested the move. "The successful rescue of the hostages turned these commandos into national heroes, but the evidence of illegal killings is compelling. National gratitude is no reason for shielding them from justice" it said in a press release. HRW argued that the amnesty proposals clearly conflict with the principles enunciated by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in March 2001, ruling against the Peruvian government in the case of the 1991 Barrios Altos massacre. In that case, which involved the amnesty law passed in 1995 by the Fujimori government, the Court declared the amnesty null and void because it conflicted with Peru's human rights treaty obligations. It later interpreted that ruling as applicable to all similar cases. [30]

On June 7, at a ceremony organized by the army to commemorate loyalty to the National Flag, the commandos were honored and decorated, including those whom the judicial branch had under investigation for alleged involvement in the extrajudicial executions. On July 29, 2002, the Commando Chavín de Huántar was selected to lead the military parade celebrating independence. This appeared to have been done to exert more pressure on the Supreme Court justices who had to decide the jurisdiction question raised by the military court, all in order to make certain that it would be the military court that investigated the extrajudicial executions. [31]

22. On August 16, 2002, the Supreme Court convened to hear the oral arguments of the parties to the jurisdictional challenge brought by the military tribunal. The military prosecutor heading up the parallel inquiry being conducted in the military court and who had to bring the charges and prove them, was the person arguing the military’s challenge. However, in his oral arguments he made a defense for the commandos, stating that “heroes must not be treated like villains.”

23. In its August 16, 2002 ruling, the Supreme Court held that the military court system had jurisdiction over the 19 commandos, thus declining jurisdiction in favor of the military tribunal. It held that the events had occurred in a district that at the time was under a state of emergency, and were part of a military operation conducted on orders from above. It further held that any crimes that the 19 commandos may have committed were the jurisdiction of the military courts. It also ruled that the civilian criminal courts should retain jurisdiction over anyone else, other than the commandos, who may have violated civilian laws.

24. These arguments had the effect of removing certain agents from the jurisdiction of the military courts, so that they could continue to be investigated in the civilian court system: Vladimiro Montesinos Torres, Roberto Huaman Ascurra, Nicolas Hermosa Ríos and Jesús Zamudio Aliaga, who had a direct hand in the execution of Eduardo Cruz Sánchez and gave the order to execute Herma Luz Meléndez Cueva and Víctor Peceros Pedraza. But the commandos who carried out the orders and the military chiefs who transmitted the orders were investigated by the very same Military Prosecutor who portrayed them as heroes in his arguments before the Supreme Court. In the end they were tried by military judges appointed by the Ministry of Defense. On July 29, in a clear demonstration of official support, the implicated commandos led Peru's traditional annual military parade.

Footnote

1. The crisis did indeed take place at the ambassador's residence and not the embassy, but in the media it later became labelled as the embassy and that is how it is now customarily referred to.

External link

• Petition for admissibility: Eduardo Nicolas Cruz Sanchez et al (CIDH, February 27, 2004)
• Troops storm embassy in Peru (BBC, 22 April 1997)
• "Peru's Fujimori: A Latin American Pinochet with an Asian Face (Pacifica News, January 30 1997]
• The Spiritual Dimension of the Hostage Drama (Catholic.net)

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