Locked-up Lori

摘要

Christmas came early for Alejandro Toledo. Last week the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica bolstered Peru's president by upholding the conviction of Lori Berenson, an American woman who has spent nine years in Peruvian jails on terrorism charges. Ms Berenson was convicted in 1996 of collaborating with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a now-defunct Cuban-style rebel group which later notoriously seized the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima. She spent nearly three years in solitary confinement in a dimly-lit mini-cell, in a prison nearly 4, 000 metres (13, 000 feet) above sea level.