Ex-spymaster guilty of corruption

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Mar. 03, 2005

PERU

Ex-spymaster guilty of corruption

Peru's former spy chief was convicted again, this time for taking payoffs from imprisoned drug dealers -- and his legal troubles are not over.
BY TYLER BRIDGES

[e-mail]


LIMA - Former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos has taken another legal hit, continuing his ignominious transformation from Peru's most feared man to an oft-convicted criminal. A special anticorruption court convicted Montesinos on Tuesday of taking payoffs from jailed drug traffickers in exchange for leaning on judges to lessen their sentences.
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DRUG CASE

Among the other upcoming high-profile cases against him are two in which he is accused of facilitating drug trafficking in Peru in exchange for a share of the profits.

He will also go to trial on charges that he directed a death squad known as the Grupo Colina, which killed 15 people during a barbecue in a Lima shantytown in 1991 and nine students and a professor one evening at a Lima university in 1992. In each case, the government said those killed were suspected of having links to the Shining Path guerrillas then terrorizing Peru. Prosecutors are seeking a 25-year sentence in that case.

PAYOFFS TO TABLOIDS

In January, Montesinos was convicted of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to owners of tabloid newspapers to smear opponents of Fujimori when he ran for reelection in 2000. Along with Montesinos, chiefs of the army and the air force were also convicted, as were 10 other people, including tabloid editors, middlemen who delivered cash, and publicists hired to invent damaging headlines and news stories.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11036415.htm
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CIA Gave at Least $10 Million To Peru's Ex-Spymaster Montesinos

By Angel Paez

(Web Posted June 28, 2001) The Central Intelligence Agency gave ex-Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos at least $10 million in cash over the last decade, as well as high-tech surveillance equipment that he used against his political opponents, the Center for Public Integrity has learned.

Montesinos, who now faces trial on murder, arms and drug trafficking charges, among others, had founded and personally controlled a counter-drug unit within Peru's National Intelligence Service, known by its Spanish acronym SIN.

It was to that Narcotics Intelligence Division, known as DIN, that the CIA directed at least $10 million in cash payments from 1990 until September 2000, U.S. officials told the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Most of the money was to have financed intelligence activities in the drug war, though officials acknowledged a small part was for antiterrorist activities.
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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIA_10mil_Montesinos.html



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Document 4: U.S. Embassy (Lima) Cable, Army General Denies Providing Information on La Cantuta to Robles, June 1, 1993, Secret, 5 pp.

General Rodolfo Robles Espinoza, once the third most powerful man in the Peruvian army, based part of his claims that General Commander of the Army Nicolás de Bari Hermoza Rios and Montesinos were involved in the creation and operation of a death squad on alleged conversations with one time head of the Army Intelligence Directorate, General Willy Chirinos. According to Robles, during his brief tenure at army intelligence, Chirinos learned of the existence of a death squad under the direction of Vladimiro Montesinos. This death squad was responsible for the massacres at La Cantuta and Barrios Altos. Fearing that the existence of a death squad would inevitably embarrass the army, Chirinos urged that it be disbanded. Montesinos, however, ordered that it remain intact. Robles goes on to claim that Chirinos was dismissed as head of army intelligence after making this recommendation. Chirinos, in statements published in Lima newspapers denies that he spoke to Robles about La Cantuta, or the existence of a death squad connected with Montesinos. The large section excised at the end of this document might possibly reveal embassy commentary on the validity of these claims.
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http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB37/03-01.htm

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Document 3:
Updated,
May 10, 2001 Origin Unknown, Peru: Military Unease Growing, December 23, 1992, Classification Unknown, 1 pp.
NOTE: This document is in Adobe PDF format

The Department of Defense’s Joint Intelligence Command released this document on April 5, 2001 in response to a FOIA request made by Jeremy Bigwood. This document focuses on the aftermath of the failed November 1992 coup attempt made by the military against President Fujimori. The document reveals growing discontent within the military over the treatment of the coup plotters. The Peruvian Army appears “rife” with rumors that several coup plotters have been tortured and have been transferred to the civilian prison “Canto Grande”, due to fears that armed forces sympathizers would help them escape if they were placed in military prison. Vladimiro Montesinos reportedly supervised torture sessions attempting to force coup plotters to name opposition politicians as co-conspirators, and he is accused of delivering some of the blows himself. The document notes that while the Army has officially denied torture allegations, “the use of torture is plausible.”
(snip/...)http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB37/#1992doc