Pubdate: Mon,  3 Mar 2003
Source: Financial Times (UK)
Contact:  The Financial Times Limited 2003
Website: http://www.ft.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/154
Author: Jane Holligan

MONTESINOS TRIAL REMINDS PERUVIANS OF THE BAD TIMES

Rows of riot police guard a specially adapted courtroom at Lurigancho prison
in the dismal outskirts of Peru's capital, Lima. The roof has been
strengthened to resist mortar attack. The public galleries are bulletproof.
And the man on trial - Vladimiro Montesinos, the shadowy national security
adviser for disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori - has arrived
wearing a bulletproof vest.

So extensive was the web of corruption and secrecy woven by Mr Montesinos
that prosecutors fear cronies may seek to free - or even kill - him. Nearly
two years after Mr Montesinos' arrest and Mr Fujimori's departure into
exile, their decade-long rule continues to haunt Peruvian society.

Mr Fujimori, an unknown university rector until his election in 1990,
famously eliminated hyperinflation. Mr Montesinos helped him plan a coup two
years later, suspend civil rights and wipe out the Maoist Shining Path
guerrilla movement.

For a brief period in the mid-1990s Peru was heralded as one of the success
stories of market-based reform and political democracy. For the US Mr
Fujimori and Mr Montesinos were seen as valuable allies in the war against
the regional cocaine trade.

However, cloaked by Mr Fujimori's growing reputation as an effective leader
and Peru's democratic façade, Mr Montesinos conspired to take control of
Peru's courts, tax service, armed forces and media. Already the story -
known to Peruvians through hundreds of released videos secretly filmed by Mr
Montesinos showing him handing over bags of money to TV owners and
politicians - has devastated the confidence of traditional political elites
and opened serious questions about the limitations of US policy.

But the trial - which could last two years - may prove more embarrassing
still, and even expose US officials to charges of complicity in Mr
Montesinos' double-dealing. As Peru was being praised for its role in
clamping down on the drugs trade, the orchestrator of that policy was taking
money from drug mafias and even - according to one allegation - running guns
to Colombia's Farc rebels. In testimony collected by the Peruvian Congress,
Mr Montesinos has alleged that US officials pressured the Peruvian
government to favour US business interests in a mining dispute.

Only Mr Montesinos really knows the full roll call of visitors to his
offices or the extent of the favours he granted. Whether any of this will be
confirmed in the trial, however, is another matter. Under Peru's clunky
legal system, the trial has already been delayed by several months and has
veered close to soap opera.

Mr Montesinos faces at least 57 charges ranging from bribery and corruption
to ordering death squad killings and arms and drug trafficking. But
prosecutors chose to focus their initial attack on a relatively minor charge
of influence trafficking, accusing him of bending the legal system to help
relatives of his former mistress. The charge carries a five-year term; Mr
Montesinos is already serving nine years after a summary hearing for
usurping the job of head of the secret service.

Mr Montesinos, a disgraced army captain turned lawyer, has been doing his
best to delay proceedings, denying all the big charges against him while
bombarding the courts with paperwork to tie up proceedings. Most important,
he is staying silent. In three hearings last week he refused to answer the
court.

On Tuesday, having changed into a Dior silk shirt with a gaudy pattern of
tiny bulls-eyes, he sat stony-faced throughout, staring straight ahead and
never glancing at his lover of six years, Jacqueline Beltran.

His indifference proved too much for the blonde Ms Beltran, resplendent in a
long white dress and lilac-blue jacket and carrying a gold lame bag.

She turned on him, daring him to "be a man" and break his silence.

The trials will be a crucial test for Peru's judiciary, one of the
institutions the ex-spymaster infiltrated and bent to his will. In the late
1990s, he wielded power by granting favours or punishments in court cases.
If a judge did not bow to his orders, he would simply order him removed from
a case.

The sheer complexity of the process has taxed the judges' resources. More
than 1,300 people are being investigated and each of six investigating
judges has to deal with several cases, some with as many as 50 defendants.

They say the government has not released sufficient funding for the task.

The real test, however, will be whether judges and prosecutors can assemble
irrefutable cases on more serious charges. One judge has already thrown out
a money laundering case against Mr Montesinos saying there was insufficient
evidence. An appeal has been filed.
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