Pubdate: Sat, 14 Jul 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Clifford Krauss

INDIGNITIES MOUNT FOR PERU'S EX-SPY CHIEF AFTER LONG MANHUNT

LIMA, Peru, July 11 -- Vladimiro L. Montesinos, the former spy chief who 
dominated Peru from the shadows for a decade and lived a life gilded with 
beachside mansions and diamond-crusted watches, is now spending his nights 
on a skimpy foam mattress over a cold slab of concrete.

Food is delivered to him through a trapdoor in his tiny cell in the prison 
block inside the naval base in the port of Callao near Lima. There is a 
single spigot of cold water for washing up. He spends his time reading law 
books and a dogeared copy of the Peruvian Constitution under a single naked 
light bulb and a thin stream of light from a tiny skylight, according to 
senior law enforcement officials.

There has been no shortage of indignities for Mr. Montesinos since his 
arrest almost three weeks ago in Venezuela after an eight-month manhunt 
that ended when the Federal Bureau of Investigation trapped an associate in 
Miami and persuaded him to pinpoint the hideout, in Caracas, of Latin 
America's most wanted fugitive.

Life is not too likely to improve soon for the former spy who dominated 
Peru's extensive intelligence apparatus and armed forces for most of 
President Alberto K. Fujimori's tenure, from 1990 to last year. He faces 
160 investigations into allegations that he used Mr. Fujimori's personal 
jet plane to smuggle drugs, trafficked arms to the largest guerrilla group 
in Colombia, laundered money and traded favors and bribes with Peru's most 
powerful politicians, executives and military leadership.

It has been another strange turn for a 56-year-old spy whose Marxist father 
named him after Vladimir I. Lenin only to see him eventually join the army. 
As a young captain, Mr. Montesinos was cashiered in the late 1970's when 
his superiors learned that he was handing state secrets to the Central 
Intelligence Agency. After a year in jail, he studied law, became a lawyer 
for drug dealers and eventually became Mr. Fujimori's own tax and divorce 
lawyer.

Mr. Montesinos was the man whom Mr. Fujimori relied on to fix his political 
and security problems. The C.I.A. turned to him to run an antidrug 
operation that it financed until last year, when reports of his bribing 
opposition legislators and smuggling arms to Colombia became widely known 
and sent the government into a tailspin.

But since he was brought back to Lima in handcuffs, Mr. Montesinos has been 
reduced to complaining that his coat is too thin to keep him warm and that 
he has been denied his constitutional rights. For nine days, he went on a 
partial hunger strike -- he indulged in crackers, cookies and chocolates 
that he had squirreled away in his pockets -- in a vain effort to avoid 
incarceration in the high-security prison that he helped design to lock up 
Peru's six most notorious terrorists.

He requested a meeting with two of those terrorist leaders, Abimael Guzman 
and Victor Polay, in the Callao prison courtyard, an effort, prosecutors 
surmise, to form an alliance to cause mischief. Prosecutors said that they 
had no intention to grant the request, but that when the two terrorists 
heard about the proposal they said they had no interest in the meeting 
anyway, prison officials said.

"At first, Montesinos appeared beaten and defeated, but he quickly 
recovered to take over his own defense," the director of the prison system, 
Gino Costa, said. "Everyone who has met him says their jaws just drop when 
they observe his intense intellect and trapdoor memory. He's very 
charismatic and simpatico."

Mr. Montesinos is also still cunning.

He has let it be known that he has thousands of videotapes that he says 
show the intimacies of Peru's most powerful, including one that he says 
shows the top prosecutor investigating him snorting cocaine with a former 
justice minister. Law enforcement officials say Mr. Montesinos has tried to 
manipulate the 15 judges and prosecutors who are interviewing him with 
dissembling narratives that mix half-truths with baldfaced lies and to 
charm his guards by recalling their nicknames from the days when he was 
their boss.

Several prosecutors and judges who have begun what promises to be months of 
interrogations say he is starting to cooperate with the prosecution by 
giving vital details on his vast telephone-taping operations and arms 
trafficking networks and naming seven senior- and middle-ranking officials 
who took part in his schemes. But he has refused to talk about any crimes 
punishable by life imprisonment like murder.

"He's named people whom he has bribed," said Jose Carlos Ugaz, the special 
prosecutor who is investigating Mr. Montesinos and Mr. Fujimori. "Some of 
the things he says are true, and others are not. I think his strategy is to 
complicate the lives of his enemies and help those who want to help him 
like his family, his lovers and his allies. He wants to invalidate himself 
as a witness. But he cannot control his hatred for certain people."

Among those whom Mr. Montesinos apparently hates is Mr. Ugaz, who said Mr. 
Montesinos had spoken against him to several judges last week. Mr. Ugaz 
said he was accused of using cocaine and requesting from Mr. Montesinos a 
$2 million bribe last year in Panama during the preliminary stages of his 
investigation.

Mr. Ugaz denied both allegations. He said he had heard that Mr. Montesinos 
had also intimated in some interrogations that he has information about the 
sexual peccadilloes of several judges.

Prosecutors have hundreds of captured videotapes made by Mr. Montesinos -- 
many of which have been shown on television -- some made in the 
presidential palace without Mr. Fujimori's knowledge.

Officials said that the tapes documented many serious crimes and that since 
Mr. Montesinos's capture, several of his aides who are already under 
arrest, including members of the so-called Colina Group death squad, have 
begun to give important evidence.

Law-enforcement officials said they were still seeking a clearer notion of 
how Mr. Montesinos managed his many enterprises, the exact nature of his 
relationship with Mr. Fujimori and whether the former spy had more money 
stashed abroad beyond the $264 million in bank accounts that they have found.

Prosecutors say Mr. Montesinos will probably face three to four years of 
trials. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in jail unless he 
cooperates with prosecutors who are seeking a complete picture of official 
crimes in their ultimate objective to extradite and try Mr. Fujimori. The 
former president has been living in exile in Japan since fleeing there when 
his government collapsed in November.

"It's probable that someone so close to Fujimori could have important 
evidence against him, and he could give up that evidence to help himself," 
Justice Minister Diego Garcia Sayan said in an interview. "Sincere 
confession can reduce penalties."

Prosecutors said their investigations of Mr. Fujimori focused on his links 
to a death squad, his personal corruption and his connections to the 
international drug trade. Two members of the death squad, which operated in 
Lima in the early 90's, have told prosecutors that Mr. Montesinos had told 
them that Mr. Fujimori was aware of their existence, law enforcement 
officials said. But the former president's role in planning and controlling 
operations is unclear.

Congresswoman Susana Higuchi, Mr. Fujimori's former wife, has accused him 
of siphoning $12.5 million in contributions from Japanese for poor Peruvian 
children. Mr. Fujimori has denied the allegation. But investigators here 
said they were trying to find the money.

Mr. Ugaz said he was trying to confirm accusations by Roberto Escobar that 
his brother Carlos, the slain head of the Medellin drug cartel, had spoken 
directly with Mr. Fujimori to give him campaign contributions. "Various 
jailed capos," Mr. Ugaz said, "have told us that Fujimori and Montesinos 
handled all the drug trafficking between Peru and Colombia."

Mr. Ugaz said the government hoped to deliver overwhelming evidence against 
Mr. Fujimori to Japan "to show that these accusations are common crimes, 
not political persecution." If Japan continues to insist that Mr. Fujimori 
is a Japanese citizen who cannot be extradited, Mr. Ugaz said, Peru will 
request that he be tried in Japan instead.
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