Peru’s ex-military chief testifies Fujimori congratulated Army for massacre
Peru’s ex-head of the Joint Chief of Staff, retired General Nicolas de Bari Hermoza Ríos, testified before a commission of Peru’s Congress that ex-president Alberto Fujimori congratulated the high command of the Armed Forces for the “murder” of nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University in 1992, according to state prosecutor Carlos Briceño.
He said that Hermoza Ríos, who was appointed by Fujimori as commander-in-chief of the Army in 1991 and held this position until 1998, recognized that the ex-president knew of the existence of the Grupo Colina death squad commanded by chief of operations Martin Rivas and administrated by Major Carlos Pinchilingue.
“After La Cantuta, Fujimori emitted a memorandum in which he congratulated Martin Rivas and other members of the Grupo Colina for their good intelligence work”, the ex-general affirmed, according to Briceño, Peru’s chief prosecutor in the Fujimori extradition case.
Hermoza Rios testified he received the memorandum “in the name of the ex-president” from Fujimori’s adviser and ex-head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), Vladimiro Montesinos, shortly after the La Cantuta massacre on July 18, 1992.
At the time, Hermoza told Montesinos that “he is rewarding a person implicated in a homicide” to which the ex-spy chief responded: “The president knows what he is doing. That’s why he signed the document (memorandum)”.
Hermoza Ríos detailed that Peru’s National Intelligence network depended solely on the decisions of the ex-president and not on the military or its High Command.
The retired general, imprisoned since 2001 on corruption charges, asserted that Fujimori presented Montesinos as his representative to the Defense Ministry. “All resolutions of the Defense sector were first transacted by the National Intelligence service”, he said.
Hermoza denied that Fujimori didn’t know about military strategies, as the ex-president recently testified in his defense before the Chilean Supreme Court to avoid his extradition to Peru.
“It’s only logical. The president was a meticulous man and he must have had immediate knowledge of such important and serious incidents (Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres)”, he concluded.
The protocol of Hermoza Ríos’ testimony has been included in the files Peruvian prosecutors handed to Chilean justice authorities as a part of the evidence in Fujimori’s extradition case. A ruling is expected by the end of April or early May.
Next to Fujimori and Montesinos, Nicolas de Bari Hermoza Ríos was the third member of Peru’s “ruling troika” in the 90’s.
Article by Wolfy Becker