The Champions of Human Rights and Democracy in Latin America

Index | E-mail | Resources              July 1998 V.II No.2     



Vladimiro Montesinos 

Behind Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's rise to power lurks the
powerful Vladimiro Montesinos Torres. Montesinos first appeared at
Fujimori's side to defend him against charges of real estate fraud when
Fujimori was running for president. The paperwork in that case mysteriously
disappeared, the charges were dropped, and Fujimori was elected president.
Montesinos received cadet training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas
soon after becoming an army officer. In 1976, he requested sick leave, stole
and falsified a blank form, and went to the U.S. Embassy in Lima. On
September 5, 1976, Montesinos flew to the U.S. as a guest of the U.S.
government. According to Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti, once in the
United States, Montesinos met with Luigi Einaudi, of the Policy Planning
Staff of the State Department, and CIA Office of Current Intelligence
officer, Robert Hawkins. He also met with academics in Connecticut and
Washington and gave a talk at the Inter-American Defense College. 
Upon his return to Peru, Montesinos was arrested and later charged with
treason. The treason charge was dropped, but he was convicted of lying and
falsehood in May 1977. He was expelled from the army and sentenced to one
year in jail. 
During his time in jail, Montesino studied the law and in the 1980s, he made
a fortune representing drug traffickers and policemen linked to drug
trafficking. In the early 1980's, he signed legal documents on behalf of a
Colombian client for the purchase or lease of two buildings in Lima that
were later raided and found to house cocaine processing. 
By 1990, Montesinos had developed a comfortable relationship with the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including meetings with the station chief
in Lima and a visit to CIA headquarters in Langley. In 1991, Montesinos took
over command of nearly all of the joint Peru-U.S. anti-drug operations and
developed an anti-drug unit within the National Intelligence Service (SIN).
Now, with the fox guarding the hen house, cooperation in anti-drug efforts
took a downward turn, and the SIN anti-drug unit committed human rights and
other abuses, but did not catch drug traffickers. 
Since then, Montesinos has consolidated his power as de-facto head of the
Peruvian National Intelligence Service (SIN) and as a Peruvian military
power broker. His zeal for rooting out "subversion" has made him many
powerful friends in the US but it has often resulted in grave human rights
abuses and illegal acts against the political opposition. 
In November 1991, fifteen people, including an eight-year-old, were killed
when hooded men with silencer-equipped automatic weapons opened fire without
warning on a party in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima. The Barrios
Altos massacre was later revealed to be the responsibility of the Grupo
Colina death squad, which answered to Montesinos. The Grupo Colina consisted
of members of the Peruvian military and intelligence. 
After Fujimori's auto-coup in April 1992, Montesinos took advantage of the
situation to even the score with Caretas journalist Gustavo Gorriti who had
written articles critical of Montesinos and the Fujimori government. Gorriti
was arrested hours after the coup and questioned about what information he
had about Montesinos. After two days of interrogation, Gorriti was released
to find that all information about Montesinos has been erased from his
computer. In the days following the coup, police generals who had arrested
Montesinos' former legal clients also received payback as they lost their
jobs. 
Three months after the auto-coup, the Montesinos-directed Grupo Colina
abducted nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University. The case
was blown open by General Rodolfo Robles, the third-highest ranking military
commander, who took refuge at the US Embassy after he stated in May 1993,
"The crime of La Cantuta was committed by a special intelligence unit (known
as the Grupo Colina) operating under the orders of Vladimiro Montesinos..."
After the civilian judge indicated her intention to call Montesinos and Army
Chief General Nicolas de Bari Hermoza to testify in the case, the Peruvian
Congress (installed by Fujimori after the auto-coup in April 1992) passed a
law moving jurisdiction in the case from the civilian courts to military
courts. In March 1998, former Peruvian Army Intelligence Agent Luisa Zanatta
said that army intelligence agents killed fellow Mariella Barreto Riofano
because she gave a magazine information about human rights violations and
where from the La Cantuta massacre were buried. Shortly before Barreto was
killed, she told Zanatta that she was part of the Grupo Colina death squad
responsible for the La Cantuta massacre. Barreto's body was found by a
roadside on March 29, 1997. The body showed evidence that Barreto was
tortured before she was decapitated and her hands and feet cut off. 
When self-confessed drug trafficker Demetrio Chavez, known as El Vaticano,
was arrested in 1996, he was originally charged with drug trafficking.
However, after he claimed that he paid $50,000 per month to Montesinos in
exchange for protection of his jungle drug operations, he was charged with
collaborating with terrorists. This gave the military jurisdiction his case.
Later, a visibly dazed Chavez retracted his allegations and Chavez' lawyer
claimed Chavez had been coerced. According to the Los Angeles Times,
transcripts of radio intercepts compiled by Peru's navy intelligence gave
the impression that Chavez was an ally of the military, as he talked of
working with military officers. 
In October 1996, Montesinos was seen in public for the first time in years
when he met with former General Barry McCaffrey, head of the U.S. Office of
National Drug Control Policy. Despite the failure of Peruvian authorities to
investigate Montesinos' links to confess drug trafficker El Vaticano,
McCaffrey stated his belief that the Peruvian government has the political
will to eradicate drug production. 
Although Peru receives millions of dollars from the U.S. each year ($25
million in fiscal year 1997) to support anti-narcotic efforts, Peru
continues to provide the largest source of coca leaf, coca paste, and
cocaine base (The Supply of Illicit Drugs to the United States, The NNICC
REPORT 1996, U.S. DEA) . The March 1998 U.S. Government Accounting Office
report, Status of U.S. International Counternarcotics Activities, cited
widespread corruption in Peru and noted that four previous reports had
"concluded that U.S. officials lacked sufficient oversight of aid to ensure
that it was being used effectively and as intended in Peru..." 
Less than a year after Demetrio Chavez claimed that he paid Montesinos
$50,000 a month to protect his drug operations, the Peruvian press reported
that Montesinos' tax records showed that he had an income of $600,000 per
year, although his official salary was just $18,000 per year. Does
Montesinos augment his government salary from the CIA, skimming US funds for
anti-drug operations, drug traffickers, or all of the above? We're unlikely
to know unless the US decides to tell what it knows about Montesinos or the
Fujimori-controlled Peruvian Congress decides to investigate him. 




Espaņol 

Gallery of Peruvian Torturers and Killers



Vladimiro Montesinos Torres
As special advisor to President Alberto Fujimori of Peru and defacto head of
Peru's National Intelligence Service, Vladimiro Montesinos Torres has
overseen and directed abuses of human rights and corruption, including the
La Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacres. Known as "Rasputin," he is rarely
seen in public, does not hold an official position, and charges against him
have a habit of mysteriously being dropped. He is protected by about 30
bodyguards. 
Born in Arequipa, Peru in 1946, Montesinos was trained as a Cadet at the US
Army School of the Americas in 1965. In 1966, he graduated from the Peruvian
Military School of Chorrillos. Later, as an army captain, he specialized as
an intelligence operative for the National Intelligence Service. 
In September 1976, Montesinos was linked to a plan to "crush the power of
the people and the workers organized into unions, political parties,
progressive magazines, and also patriotic young officers and other ranks,
and progressive sectors of the Church." 
Some time in 1976, Montesinos made a quick trip to the United States,
apparently without the authorization of his military superiors, a leftist
military regime. Montesinos was charged with selling state secrets to the
CIA (an enemy of leftist military regime) and was cashiered from the Army in
1977. He may have served some time in prison, but he was quickly back in the
circles of power. 
He became a lawyer, began representing drug traffickers and policemen linked
to drug trafficking, and amassed a fortune. In the early 1980's, he signed
legal documents on behalf of a Colombian client for the purchase or lease of
two buildings in Lima that were later raided and found to house cocaine
processing. 
According to The Guardian, in September 1996, Defense Minister Tomas
Castillo admitted that Montesinos was tried in 1983 by a military court for
treason and acquitted. Montesinos was accused of using a clandestine
newspaper to foment a military coup. 
Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti annoyed Montesinos when he wrote a
serious of articles in 1983 for the weekly Caretas profiling Montesinos'
career. 
Montesinos gained his first real notoriety when he defended 1990 Peruvian
presidential candidate Fujimori against accusations of fraudulent real
estate dealings. The paperwork in that case mysteriously disappeared and the
charges were quietly dropped. 
In November 1991, fifteen people, including an eight-year-old, were killed
when hooded men with silencer-equipped automatic weapons opened fire without
warning on a party in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima. The Barrios
Altos massacre was later revealed to be the responsibility of the Grupo
Colina, which answered to Montesinos. 
On April 5, 1992, Fujimori dissolved congress, fired many of the country's
judges and suspended the constitution. Guillermo Cabala, considered by many
to be beyond reproach, was one of the judges fired by Fujimori. Cabala said
that Montesinos had him fired out of "personal vengeance" because Cabala
blocked Montesinos' attempt to silence a weekly magazine with a gag order in
1991. In another Montesinos payback, journalist Gustavo Gorriti was arrested
just hours after the coup. According to Gorriti, he was only questioned
about what he had about Montesinos. "The only time I was threatened during
my two-day stay at military intelligence headquarters was when they tried to
get the password into my computer," stated Gorriti in an Asian Wall Street
Journal article. When his computer was returned, all records concerning
Montesinos had been erased. In the days after the coup, Montesinos continued
his revenge by firing dozens of police generals, including many who had
arrested Montesinos' clients in drug raids. 
On July 18, 1992, nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University
were abducted by security forces. The case was blown open by General Rodolfo
Robles, the third-highest ranking military commander, who took refuge at the
US Embassy after he stated in May 1993, "The crime of La Cantuta was
committed by a special intelligence unit (known as the Grupo Colina)
operating under the orders of Vladimiro Montesinos..." After the civilian
judge indicated her intention to call Montesinos and Army Chief (and fellow
SOA graduate) General Nicolas de Bari Hermoza to testify in the case, the
Peruvian Congress (installed by Fujimori after the auto-coup in April 1992)
passed a law moving jurisdiction in the case from the civilian courts to
military courts. 
In a 1992 letter, then-California Sen. Alan Cranston asked the State
Department about Montesinos' relationship with "the U.S. intelligence
community." Cranston expressed concern that the U.S. was "running the same
risk with him--in terms of the seriousness of our commitment in
anti-narcotics activities"--as with Gen. Manuel A. Noriega of Panama, who
allegedly worked with U.S. intelligence while raking in bribes from drug
smugglers. 
On August 22, 1996, Fujimori's Congress turned down an opposition motion for
a commission to investigate Montesinos. The Fujimori Congress also rejected
a request that Prime Minister Alberto Pandolfi and Defense Minister Gen.
Juan Castillo Meza provide them with a report clarifying exactly what role
Montesinos plays in the National Intelligence Service. 
When self-confessed drug trafficker Demetrio Chavez was arrested in 1996, he
was originally charged with drug trafficking. However, after he claimed that
he paid $50,000 per month to Montesinos in exchange for protection of his
jungle drug operations, he was charged with collaborating with terrorists.
This gave the military jurisdiction over his case. Later, a visibly dazed
Chavez retracted his allegations and Chavez' lawyer claimed Chavez had been
coerced. According to the LA Times, transcripts of radio intercepts compiled
by Peru's navy intelligence gave the impression that Chavez was an ally of
the military, as he talked of working with military officers. During the
same trial, General Jaime Rios, who had originally been called as a witness,
was then included with the defendants and sentenced to 15 years in jail in
October 1996 for taking payments for drug airlifts and accepting supplies
for his local men. Rios claimed that his sentence was a result of an aborted
coup attempt to overturn Fujimori's April 1992 auto-coup and dissolution of
Congress. Rios also failed to sign a document denouncing General Rodolfo
Robles. 
In April 1997, Baruch Ivcher's Frecuencia Latina Channel 2 broadcast
allegations by Peruvian Army Intelligence agent Leonor La Rosa that she was
tortured by intelligence agents and it also reported on Montesinos' tax
records, which indicating he was making $600,000 a year, even though his
official salary was $18,000 per year. On July 14 1997, Ivcher was stripped
of his Peruvian nationality and in September control of his station was
handed to minority shareholders more friendly to the government. In
response, former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar said that,
"Peru is no longer a democracy. We are now a country headed by an
authoritarian regime." The 1997 US Human Rights Report on Peru stated, "The
Government's action in this case was widely interpreted as an attempt to
prevent the station from broadcasting any more negative stories about the
regime. If this was the case, it appears to have succeeded, as very few
stories critical of the Government appeared on Channel 2 since the change of
management." 
On March 16, 1998, former Peruvian Army Intelligence Agent Luisa Zanatta
accused Montesinos of ordering illegal wiretaps of leading politicans and
journalists. Zanatta also said that army intelligence agents killed fellow
agent Mariella Barreto Riofano because she gave a magazine information about
human rights violations and where bodies from the La Cantuta massacre were
buried. Shortly before Barreto was killed, she told Zanatta that she was
part of the Grupo Colina death squad responsible for the La Cantuta
massacre. Barreto's body was found by a roadside on March 29, 1997. The body
showed evidence that Barreto was tortured before she was decapitated and her
hands and feet cut off. 

Gallery of Peruvian Torturers and Killers
Peruvian Disappeared | Human Rights in Peru 

Rescue's Architect: Fujimori's Shadowy Alter Ego
By Clifford Krauss
(New York Times - April 28, 1997) Information is emerging
indicating that the shadowy figure who is the unofficial head of
Peruvian intelligence was the lead planner for the assault that
rescued 71 hostages at the Japanese ambassador's residence in
Lima, several experts on Peruvian affairs say.
The intelligence chief, Ivan Vladimiro Montesinos, cashiered
army captain, former lawyer of drug barons, and alter ego of
President Alberto Fujimori for the last five years, is a figure
who inspires fear and fascination in Peru.
Like a good spy - one who has long been reported to have had
ties to the CIA - Montesinos has appeared before news cameras
only once in the last several years.
So when he strode triumphantly, wearing dark glasses, with
the army chief of staff into the liberated Japanese compound on
Wednesday, followed by a television camera crew, it was a sign
that he had emerged as an even stronger figure in Peru.
Montesinos took heavy criticism from rivals within the
security apparatus for the intelligence breakdown that led to the
guerrilla hostage-taking last December. But his brand of
secretive authoritarianism may now be politically acceptable
again as Fujimori prepares to run for a third term.
"Montesinos is the man of the hour", said Enrique Obando, a
Peruvian expert on military affairs. "Peruvian sources say he
planned the operation, and his public appearance is
extraordinary, especially after rumors that he was in political
trouble."
Michael Radu, a Peru scholar at the Foreign Policy Research
Institute in Philadelphia, said that people "close to Peruvian
intelligence" had indicated to him that Montesinos' intelligence
service was responsible for "the basic planning" of the raid.
Noting that the newly constituted 150-man commando unit that
conducted the raid was a combination of elite special forces
units from the police, army, navy and air force, Radu said,
"Montesinos is the only person who could bring these four rival -
at times bitterly rival - forces together."
Although the military contributed by far the most commandos
for the operation, it has long suffered from a leadership vacuum.
Gen. Nicolas Hermoza Rios, officially the head of the armed
forces, is widely considered a weak administrator who has been
fending off challenges from competing commanders, and even from
Montesinos, in recent months.
But his appearance along with Montesinos as they reviewed
the victorious troops at the Japanese compound appeared to signal
a consolidation of the two as participants in Peru's ruling
troika, with Fujimori.
"They agreed to appear together because they know taking
credit guarantees their survival", said Carlos Basombreo,
director of the Institute for Legal Defense, a Peruvian human
rights group.
Peruvian military officials have refused to divulge details
on the commando units, or who commanded and advised them.
One former American official who worked in Peru said he
believed Montesinos worked closely with the CIA. The former
official, who continues to keep in touch with Peruvian security
officials, said Fujimori relied heavily on Montesinos, who
constantly "nudges" him in a "hard-line direction".
Among Fujimori's advisers, Montesinos, who is in his 50s, is
commonly thought to have been the chief advocate of the
president's decision to dissolve Congress and the supreme court
in 1992.
Clinton administration officials have insisted that the
United States played no major role in the rescue operation beyond
basic anti-terrorism training given to the Peruvian security
forces in recent years.
Nevertheless, relations between the militaries and
intelligence services of the two countries have grown closer in
the last few years in the fight against cocaine trafficking, and
Montesinos made a surprise appearance late last year at a
reception in Lima for retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton
administration's drug policy director.
Thomas Crispell, a CIA spokesman, denied having any
knowledge of any links Montesino might have to the United States
or his role in the rescue operation.
"Liaison relations are not discussed", he said. "We have
been no-commenting Peru."
Montesinos is an exotic figure even in a country whose
politics in recent decades have been defined by cultish terrorist
groups, leftist generals, a rightist presidential campaign by a
novelist who lived in Paris, and the hard-fisted Fujimori.
Montesinos has exhibited an independent spirit from the very
beginning of his career as a captain in a leftist anti-American
government. In 1977, he was sentenced to a year in jail by a
Peruvian army tribunal for desertion after he visited American
military officials in Washington without permission from his
superiors.
Accusations have persisted that he has had an off-and-on
relationship with American intelligence ever since; he has
consistently denied them.
Last year, a man under arrest and accused of being a drug
dealer publicly accused Montesinos of having accepted bribes from
drug traffickers. Fujimori and his congressional allies blocked
efforts to investigate the allegations, and the man later
recanted his assertions.
In recent weeks, Montesinos has again been at the center of
controversy when a female intelligence officer was killed and
another tortured while in the custody of other intelligence
agents. Four intelligence officers were arrested this month after
the tortured agent said on television that she was punished after
being accused of telling journalists of secret plans to spy on
political figures who opposed Fujimori.
Fujimori promised a full investigation, but he was quoted in
a local wire service report as adding that he would "put my hand
through the fire" for Montesinos.