Week in Review -- Berenson Reconvicted
The New York Times -- 24 June 2001
by Clifford Krauss
For five years, the United States put pressure on Peru to give Lori Berenson a new, civilian trial. The trial was granted: the 31-year-old New Yorker was again convicted of collaborating with terrorists by renting a house for them and posing as a journalist to get into the Congress building to analyze its vulnerability to attack. But unlike the military court that first convicted her, the three civilian judges ruled that she was not a terrorist. Her life sentence was reduced to 20 years. She said she would appeal to Peru's Supreme Court, but her best hope may be for a pardon from the incoming president, Alejandro Toledo.