Barrios Altos massacre

The Barrios Altos massacre took place on 3 November, 1991, in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, Peru. Fifteen people, including an eight year old child, were killed, and four more injured, by assailants who were later determined to be members of Grupo Colina, a death squad made up of members of the Peruvian Armed Forces. The atrocity came to be seen as a symbol of the human rights violations committed during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori and was one of the crimes for which Fujimori was extradited from Chile to Peru on Saturday, Sept. 20. It had previously been cited in the request for his extradition submitted by the Peruvian government to Japan in 2003.

The massacre
On the evening of 3 November, a neighborhood barbecue was being held at 840 Jirón Huanta to collect funds to repair the building. At approximately 23:30, six heavily-armed individuals burst into the building. They had arrived in two vehicles, a Jeep Cherokee and a Mitsubishi. These cars had police lights and sirens, which were turned off when they reached the location.



The assailants, who ranged from 25 to 30 years of age, covered their faces with balaclava masks and ordered the victims to lie on the floor. They fired at them indiscriminately for about two minutes, killing 15 of them, including an eight year-old boy, and seriously injuring another four. One of the injured was permanently disabled. Subsequently, the assailants fled in their vehicles, sounding their sirens once again.

The police during their investigation found 111 cartridges and 33 bullets of the same caliber at the scene; they determined the assailants had used sub-machine guns equipped with silencers.

Aftermath
Judicial investigations and newspaper reports subsequently revealed that those involved worked for military intelligence; they were members of the Grupo Colina, which was known for carrying out its own anti-terrorist program. It appeared later that the assailants had been targeting a meeting of Shining Path rebels, which actually took place on the second floor of the building.

Several weeks later, Congress convened an investigation committee to look into the massacre. In December, the Committee conducted an inspection of the building where the events took place, interviewed four people and performed other tasks. However, it was unable complete its investigation, because of Fujimori's "palace coup" on April 5, 1992, in which he dissolved Congress. The Democratic Constitutional Congress elected in its place in November 1992 did not take up the investigation again or publish the senatorial committee's preliminary findings.

Amnesty
Judicial authorities were unable to launch a serious investigation of the incident until April 1995, at which time the military courts responded by filing a petition before the Supreme Court for jurisdiction over the case. However, before the Court ruled on the petition, the case was effectively closed by Congress's passing of law No. 26479, which granted a general amnesty to all those members of the security forces and civilians who were the subject of a complaint, investigation, indictment, trial or conviction, or who were serving prison sentences, for human rights violations committed after May 1980.

Prior to the amnesty law being passed, however, the investigations had revealed compromising information. In May 1993, and again in January 1995, dissident officers from the Peruvian army stated publicly that members of Grupo Colina were responsible for the Barrios Altos massacre. The officers also stated that the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) had full knowledge of the massacre.

Case reopened
After the fall of the Fujimori government in 2000, the Amnesty Law was repealed and the case reopened, and a number of the alleged assailants were taken into custody. On March 21, 2001, the Peruvian Attorney General Nelly Calderón presented charges against Fujimori in Congress accusing him of being a "co-author" of the massacre. She presented evidence that Fujimori, acting in concert with Vladimiro Montesinos, head of the SIN, exercised control over Grupo Colina. The charges allege that the group could not have committed crimes of this magnitude without Fujimori's express orders or consent, and that the formation and functioning of the Colina group was part of an overall counter-insurgency policy that involved systematic violations of human rights. According to the report, Fujimori went to SIN headquarters to celebrate with intelligence officers after the massacre took place.  

Later in 2001, the government agreed to pay USD $3.3 million in compensation to four survivors and the relatives of fifteen people murdered. On September 13, 2001, Supreme Court Justice José Luis Lecaros issued an international warrant to Interpol for the arrest of Fujimori, who at the time lived in Japan. In August 2003, the Peruvian government submitted to Japan a request for the extradition of Fujimori, and among the crimes cited in the 700-page document was the Barrios Altos massacre. 

In 2004, Peruvian judges ordered the release of several of the Barrios Altos suspects, who had been held for more than three years without a sentence, allegedly to comply with a recommendation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Supreme Court of Justice president Walter Vásquez Vejarano said an investigation is under way into the judges who allowed trials to be delayed for so long.