Peru fears spy chief
Montesinos may outwit justice
LIMA, Peru, March 11
—
For a decade, Vladimiro
Montesinos lived a life that would have made James Bond green with envy:
bribes, bodyguards, a blonde mistress, not to mention the secret videos,
foreign bank accounts and even an escape tunnel hidden under a pink hot
tub.
Now, nearly two years after Peru's former spy chief was jailed on
charges ranging from embezzlement to masterminding murder, and three
weeks into trials that could drag on for years, experts and ordinary
Peruvians wonder: Could Montesinos get away with it all?
''People ask themselves why there isn't swift justice for someone like
Montesinos, whose crimes are so obvious and who was in so many videos,''
said sociologist Luis Pacheco.
''On the contrary, all they see is a long and tedious trial,'' he said.
He echoed widely held worries that Montesinos could at the very least
discredit a fragile judicial system or at worst walk free after serving
just a few years behind bars.
According to a University of Lima survey, 98 percent of people polled
believe Montesinos is guilty. Of those, 62.5 percent say he should get
life in jail, while 14 percent say he should be given the death penalty.
Montesinos, once ex-president Alberto Fujimori's behind-the-scenes top
adviser, kicked off the scandal that toppled Fujimori in 2000 when he was
seen in a clandestine video he made paying a lawmaker $15,000 to switch
parties.
57 TRIALS DUE
Dubbed Rasputin after the shrewd, shadowy adviser to Russia's royal
family in the early 20th century, Montesinos returned to the spotlight on
February 18 when he took the stand in a public trial on
influence-peddling charges -- the first of at least 57 separate trials
which he faces.
Sitting placidly in a courtroom in a heavily guarded Lima jail, the
balding, pot-bellied Montesinos hardly looks like the man alleged to have
greased palms across Peru, arranged for bloody killings and orchestrated
a network of corruption.
Montesinos admits to some lesser crimes, but denies those that carry
30-year prison terms, like drug smuggling and responsibility for two
1990s massacres by army death squads that left 25 suspected leftist
rebels dead.
He said he did it all on orders from Fujimori, who has been in self-exile
in Japan ever since he abruptly quit the presidency weeks after the
Montesinos scandal unravelled.
Fujimori is planning to run again for the presidency in 2006, but
President Alejandro Toledo wants to extradite the ex-leader on corruption
and human rights charges, which Fujimori denies.
Peru was anxious to see what the media called ''the trial of the
century,'' expecting potentially damning revelations from Montesinos, who
secretly taped hundreds of meetings with judges, top officials media
magnates and politicians.
But so far, the trial has been more soap opera than spy thriller.
Scanning newspaper headlines while waiting for a bus in Lima, secretary
Teresa Panduro scoffed at the trial.
''The press talks about (Montesinos') posh clothes and how he doesn't
want to testify. Even (Montesinos' former lover) Jackie (Beltran) looks
like she's going to a party,'' she said.
MONTESINOS REMAINS SILENT
Montesinos barely glanced at Beltran, his lover of six years, as she
defended herself against charges that she and Montesinos arranged for
illegal favours for her relatives.
Beltran, a blonde former secretary, was the butt of media jokes after
showing up in a zebra-print top to give emotional testimony about her
one-time love for Montesinos. She said she did not suspect the money for
European vacations or a luxurious beach house were ill-gotten. The beach
house featured the now-famous pink hot tub with concealed escape route.
Montesinos, a lawyer who once defended drug runners, has so far refused
to utter a word on the stand, a move legal experts some say is designed
to ridicule judges and state prosecutors and to position himself for the
lightest possible sentence.
''(Montesinos) wants to draw things out...because political conditions
can change. What if Fujimori really does return? In that case, he's
betting on getting out quickly,'' said Jorge Avendano, former head of
Lima's bar association.
Mechanic Juan Paiva, watching TV in a restaurant near the jail where
Montesinos is being tried, said the spy chief was trying to pull the wool
over Peru's eyes one more time.
''It looks like the cat's got his tongue. He used to smooth talk to win
people over and bribe everyone, and now he's making himself out to be
innocent,'' he said.
HOW MUCH TIME WILL HE GET?
Most of the charges Montesinos faces are corruption-related that
carry prison terms of up to 12 years, legal experts said. If convicted
for drug trafficking or responsibility for 1990s killings, the sentences
rise to 30 years.
Montesinos stands to benefit, Avendano said, from the fact that prison
sentences do not accumulate in Peru as they do, for example, in the
United States. That means if Montesinos received 20 separate convictions
carrying 10-year terms, he would only serve 10 years -- or less if he is
allowed to participate in in-prison work schemes.
''This trial is unveiling the Peruvian legal system to the public and it
shows that its criminal process is obsolete and archaic,'' said Anibal
Quiroga, a law professor at Lima's Catholic University.
''There is a myth surrounding Montesinos -- just like happened with
(rebel group Shining Path leader Abimael) Guzman. People think that he's
so astute and intelligent and that the laws are so out-of-date that he
can manipulate that,'' he said.
Even if Montesinos is sentenced to 30 years, some experts say he will
have managed to further undermine a court system already fragile as it
seeks to polish an image severely tarnished by allegations of endemic
corruption under Fujimori.
''First of all, people don't have a high opinion of the judicial
system...and that's a challenge for courts. And now they're seeing
judges, prosecutors, lawyers and defendants slugging it out -- everyone
but Montesinos,'' Pacheco said.
Just three weeks into the trials, Peruvians are already fed up with the
trial as they predict the man accused of robbing millions from state
coffers could get off lightly.
''He should get life just for making a fool out of Peru in front of the
whole world,'' the mechanic Paiva said bitterly.
(Additional reporting by Marco Aquino)
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