Peru's judiciary opened the most important human rights trial in the country's history on August 17, when the Anti-Corruption Court began taking testimony in the trial of 57 defendants accused of taking part in a paramilitary death squad, the Colina Group.
The Colina group, which operated in the early 1990s, is accused of killing at least 35 people, including 15 people in 1991 in Barrios Altos, an inner-city Lima neighborhood, and nine students and a professor from the La Cantuta teaching college, also in Lima, the following year. The paramilitary group was allegedly set up as an illegal arm of the state security forces to eliminate suspected members of the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), guerrilla groups that were active in Peru throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The leadership of the two subversive groups was arrested in late 1992 and both have been on the decline since.

Apart from the seriousness of the crimes, what makes this trial important is the list of defendants. Among the 57 people on trial are Vladimiro Montesinos and retired general Nicolas Hermoza Rios. Three other Army generals, Luis Cubas, Juan Rivero and Julio Salazar, are also defendants. Montesinos was the right-hand man to former President Alberto Fujimori throughout the 1990s. He was the de facto head of the all-powerful National Intelligence Service (SIN) through which he coordinated both anti-subversive and anti-drug operations. Gen. Hermoza was head commander of the Army and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for seven years in the last decade. Both men stood by Fujimori during his April 1992 "self-coup," when he closed Congress and the judiciary. They were part of the "troika" that formed what Fujimori called the Emergency Government of National Reconstruction.

While Fujimori has lived in self-imposed exile in Japan since fleeing the presidency and corruption charges in November 2000, Montesinos and Hermoza are in prison in Lima and both have been convicted of embezzlement charges. Montesinos is believed to have stolen up to 1 billion USD during his decade in power, and Hermoza has been convicted of receiving 20 million USD in kickbacks from weapons purchases made during a brief border conflict Peru fought against Ecuador in February 1995. Fujimori is also accused in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta cases, but his case is being heard in the Supreme Court and not the Anti-Corruption Court because the accusation against him was first made by Congress.

It took Prosecutor Pablo Sanchez and his team three years to put together the 357-page accusation from a case file totaling more than 50,000 pages. Sanchez has requested a 35-year sentence - the maximum allowable by law - for Montesinos, Hermoza and Salazar. Montesinos is accused of masterminding the group and planning operations. Hermoza is also accused of planning operations, as well as running cover-ups. Salazar was technically Montesinos' boss at the SIN. A 35-year sentence has also been requested for former major Martin Rivas, accused of leading the Colina Group. Maj. Rivas and 10 other soldiers were already found guilty by a court martial in 1994 for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta killings. That trial, however, found that the crimes were not committed by an organized group. Rivas, who was sentenced to 20 years, and the others were pardoned in a controversial amnesty law passed by Fujimori in mid-1995. The law was repealed in 2001.

The prosecutor expects the trial to last at least six months and is prepared for legal maneuvers to delay proceedings. On the first day of proceedings, for example, lawyers for Generals Cubas and Rivero requested that the trial be postponed because their clients were ill.

"This is an emblematic case for the court, the victims and Peruvian society," said Sanchez. "There is no doubt that this group existed." If he is successful in prosecuting the defendants, a guilty verdict would prove that human rights violations were sanctioned by the state during the Fujimori administration. Two years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) in Peru found the Shining Path responsible for 54% of the crimes, followed by the military and police forces, which were responsible for 37%.