Peru
Military leaders sentenced in journalist’s 1988 muPosted Oct 20 2007
On Oct. 2, The National Criminal Bench of Peru found two military officials responsible for the Nov. 24 1988 murder of Hugo Bustíos, journalist and correspondent for Caretas magazine.
Víctor La Vera Hernández, commander and military chief of Huanta, Ayacucho, and Captain Amador Vidal Sanbento were sentenced to 17 and 15 years in prison, respectively. However, both men have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.
Accusations against military immediately followed Bustíos’ murder. Caretas Magazine published the testimony of seven witnesses on December 5, 1988. And the Inter-American Commission on Human rights chronicled the events surrounding his murder in a 1997 call for action.
In 2003, the government of Peru finally agreed to cooperate with commission’s demands for an investigation, reported the International Freedom of Expression Exchange in an Oct. 3 alert.
Bustíos was the President of the National Association of Journalists of Huanta, and he had been working on a series of articles critical of the military in the Huanta province of the Ayacucho region, roughly 200 miles southwest of Lima. He reported several mass graves in Huanta, and immediately preceding his death, Bustíos had been investigating the murder of a local man and son.
The Inter-American Commission’s report included eyewitness accounts from journalist Eduardo Rojas Arce, who was fired upon alongside Bustíos.
After military officials directed the journalists toward the scene they wanted to investigate, Arce said that: “A little further on, they started firing on us from the left side of the highway, hiding in the thick vegetation and in a half-destroyed house. Before the attack no word was spoken, nor was there any sign to halt, and all the shooting was to kill. I started to shout when I became aware of the attack, yelling that we were journalists. Despite this, they continued firing. Hugo Bustíos was the first to be hit. I was hit by two bullets on my left arm and on the left side of my abdomen.”