Peru’s justice chief quits over killings

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 11

Peru’s justice chief quits over killings

NZPA-Reuter Lima Peru’s Justice Minister, under fire from the Opposition for his alleged role in, the crushing of prison mutinies that killed hundreds of people, resigned from his post yesterday. Luis Gonzalez Posada, a 40-year-old lawyer regarded as a close adviser to the President, Mr Alan Garcia, said he had had to resign because of excesses committed by security forces in the quelling of a riot by accused Leftist guerrillas at the Lurigancho prison. Earlier the Government dismissed General Andres Maximo Lira, the chief of the the paramilitary Republican Guard police force. Mr Garcia has accused the Guard of executing at least 100 accused Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla Inmates after they had surrendered at Lurigancho, one of the

three prisons where the rebels revolted on June 19 and 20. One hundred members of the Guard have been arrested for the killings. The controversy over the military-led crackdown of the mutinies at the Lurigancho, El Fronton, and Santa Barbara prisons is regarded by diplomats as the biggest crisis of Mr Garcia’s 11-month-oid Social Democratic Government. Mr Gonzalez Posada said the Justice Ministry, officially in charge of prisons, had played no role in the excesses security forces committed at Lurigancho, Peru’s biggest prison. Mr Garcia’s Cabinet had voted on June 19 to put the prisons under temporary military control to put down the rebellions. Mr Gonzalez Posada said the security forces had exceeded all the authority given by the

Cabinet and had violated all elemental, legal, and Christian principles in the crackdown at Lurigancho. Mr Garcia has announced a far-reaching probe into the Lurigancho killings, and diplomatic observers say that that has deepened tensions between the President and the military. The United Left (LU.) alliance, the second-big-gest political force after the governing American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (A.P.R.A.), had demanded Mr Gonzalez Posada’s resignation earlier yesterday. “We demand that the Justice Minister, who has the principal responsibility in this area ... submit his immediate resignation together with the Ministers of the Armed Forces and the Interior Minister,” a Leftist leader, Senator Javier Diez Canseco, said.

The LU. would submit a

motion in Congress to impeach the Ministers unless they resigned, he said. The military says 156 inmates died in the crushing of the revolts. Mr Diez Canseco puts the figure at 250, including those who died in the fighting against security forces. Peru’s main trade union group says more than 400 were killed. Levelling fresh allegations of abuses, Mr Diez Canseco said that Navy Marines who assaulted the El Fronton prison, on an island off Lima, slaughtered up to 87 accused Sendero inmates who had surrendered. Quoting unidentified witnesses, he said many were shot in the back of the neck after they had been interrogated. Mr Diez Canseco said human rights groups would also bring charges against the commanders of the Armed Forces.