Vladimiro Montesinos is following the case for which he is accused. Europa Press/Contacto/El Comercio (Europa Press/Contacto/El Comerci)
When the torso of her body was found in a bag northeast of Lima, Sergeant Mariela Barreto Riofano was 28 years old and the mother of a girl and a newborn. It was March 23, 1997, and Peru had descended into a spiral of violence in Alberto Fujimori’s second five years. A crisis exacerbated by a massive kidnapping that had kept the country and the world in suspense for three months: the occupation of the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, Morihisa Aoki. Terrorists from the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) had taken hostage diplomats, high authorities and even Fujimori’s relatives, promising to release them only in exchange for the release of more than 400 of their imprisoned comrades. The uncertainty was eternal. Vladimir Montesinos. Fujimori’s then-presidential adviser and head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) was sentenced Friday to 23 years in prison for the crime.
Two weeks before the assassination of Barreto, an Army Intelligence Service (SIE) agent, the Erretistas said they heard strange noises under the residence. It was about soldiers digging with pickaxes and lamps. Although the government insisted before the international community that it would seek a peaceful solution, in reality it had opted for violence. He ordered a series of tunnels to be built to enter the residence and surprise the kidnappers, which eventually happened as part of the so-called Chavín de Huántar operation. The secret that was no longer a secret was published by the country’s major newspapers the day after the terrorists’ statements. Mariela Barreto has been accused of leaking information about the operation to the press, which has been denied by La República newspaper investigative journalist Edmundo Cruz, who asserts that his branch spotted her in the middle of the field work. “The hypothesis that agent Mariela Barreto Riofano was murdered on the basis of an untruth must be examined and investigated with care and integrity,” he wrote a few years ago.
The truth is that Barreto has been under investigation by the Army Inspectorate for several months. Until the birth of her second daughter in January 1997, she was constantly interrogated because her former colleagues from the Colina group thought she was an informer. This paramilitary commando, set up in the 1990s to attack government opponents and with which she joined, was convinced that Barreto was leaking data on the Bermuda plan, which consisted of attacking one of his most persistent opponents: the journalist César Hildebrandt. He has also been accused of providing the location of the bodies of the La Cantuta massacre, in which a dozen university students and a professor accused of terrorism were dismembered and burned in 1992.
The person who ran the Colina group was the elder Santiago Martin Rivas, Mariela Barreto’s ex-husband and father of her first daughter. Rivas has always denied having any connection to his assassination, instead blaming Vladimiro Montesinos, Alberto Fujimori’s presidential adviser and head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN). The power behind the might.
This Friday, 26 years after the macabre murder of Mariela Barreto – her head was never found – the judiciary found them both guilty. Montesinos, who watched the hearing virtually from the Callao Naval Base jail, was sentenced to 23 years in prison for aggravated homicide aggravated by treason after establishing that he was the contributor to the crime. While Santiago Martin Rivas received the same sentence, although in his case it was clarified that he was the culprit. Effective prison sentences were also ordered for others involved, such as the former head of SIE, former Colonel Carlos Sánchez Noriega (15 years) and former commander José Salinas Zuzunaga (8 years).
The verdict is controversial, however, as the court ruled that the sentence would be included in the sentences the defendants were already serving. That is, no more years are appended, but the penalty is combined into one larger penalty. Such is the case of Vladimiro Montesinos, sentenced to 25 years in prison (from June 25, 2001 to June 24, 2026) for the massacres in La Cantuta and Barrios Altos. Both crimes were committed by the Colina group. The same is happening with Santiago Martin Rivas, who was also sentenced to 25 years in prison (from November 27, 200 to November 27, 2027). Of course, both were ordered to pay $138,000 in favor of Mariela Barreto’s legal heirs: their daughters, the two girls who grew up without a mother and could never afford a full funeral for her. When questioned about the crime this morning, Montesinos said without batting an eyelid, “I reserve the right.”
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