Vladimir Montesinos

Vladimiro Ilich Lenin Montesinos Torres (Arequipa, Peru, May 20, 1945) is a Peruvian ex-military officer, politician, drug trafficker and lawyer. He was presidential adviser to former President Alberto Fujimori between 1990 and 2000. He is imprisoned in the maximum security module of the Ancón II Penitentiary Center in Lima. In total he was accused of sixty-three crimes ranging from drug trafficking to murder.

In 1976 he provided the US with a list detailing Peru's Soviet-sourced weaponry and new arms acquisitions for a possible war with Pinochet's Chile. After being discovered, he was discharged and denounced for treason, spending a year in prison.

When Alberto Fujimori won the 1990 presidential elections, he appointed Montesinos as head of Peru's National Intelligence Service (SIN), government security advisor, and main presidential adviser between 1990 and 2000. He collaborated on the design of the political strategy to confront the terrorist networks of Sendero Luminoso and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). However, he gained fame for being part of the corruption network installed in the government.

In September 2000, a video (the first vladivideo) was released to the entire country, in which Montesinos gave US$15,000 to opposition congressman Alberto Kouri to join Fujimori's party. A week later, he fled from Peru to Panama Due to Montesinos's strategy of recording all of his meetings (without the knowledge of his interlocutors), there is a large amount of filming and voice recordings. Where he is observed at the peak of his power: distributing money and favors to Peruvian businessmen and politicians. These events marked the end of the Fujimorato.

In September 2006, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison for his direct participation in an illegal agreement to provide ten thousand assault weapons to the FARC. Montesinos was the center of an intricate network of negotiations to transport the assault rifles from Jordan to the Colombian jungle.

On October 1, 2010, he was sentenced to twenty-five years of effective punishment along with other military members of the Colina Group, for the Barrios Altos massacre and the death of Pedro Yauri. Former President Alberto Fujimori was also sentenced as "mediate perpetrator" for this case and the La Cantuta massacre.

Biography

He was born in Arequipa in 1946, the son of Francisco Montesinos y Montesinos and Elsa Torres Vizcarra. He descends from Arequipa politician and orator Andrés Martínez de Orihuela, who was Minister of Finance in 1833.

His uncle Alfonso Montesinos y Montesinos was a lawyer and senator. His grandfather Guillermo Montesinos Pastor was an artist and his aunt Adela Montesinos was a poet.

Military Life

He graduated as an artillery lieutenant in 1966, third among fourteen artillerymen. With the military coup of October 1968 led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, he was assigned to a military barracks in Lima. His friendly relationship with the son of General Ernesto Montagne favored him to attend the university and continue his studies in law and sociology at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

Montagne retired at the end of 1972, and his position was assumed by the foreign minister, General Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, also from Arequipa. When Montagne left, Montesinos lost influence and received the news that he would be assigned to serve in a distant provincial barracks. However, Montesinos prepared a paper on National Security and went to Mercado offering him the paper as the basis for his speech. After that, the general appointed her as his personal adviser. Thus, Montesinos found himself at the center of power and information, being Mercado's right-hand man when he was prime minister, minister of war, and general commander of the army during the Government of the Armed Forces.

Espionage scandal

In 1976, Major José Fernández Salvatteci, of the Army's Military Intelligence Service, accused Montesinos of the crimes of espionage and treason, accusing him of delivering military documents to the United States embassy in Lima. The documents included a list of weapons that Peru had purchased from the Soviet Union. Shortly thereafter, General Mercado ordered the charges dropped.

It is known that Montesinos made a two-week trip to Washington D.C., paid for by the United States Government. Upon his return to Lima, he was arrested for failing to obtain official government permission to make the trip. Subsequent investigations revealed that he had in his possession top-secret documents, and that he had photographed them and provided copies to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Montesinos had traveled to the United States without authorization from the Army command, and had falsified military documents to allow him to complete the trip without being detained. He visited several foreign institutions as an official representative of the Peruvian army, also without authorization. For these facts, he was dishonorably discharged from the Army and sentenced to one year in military prison. This was a far less severe sentence than the usual death penalty that was the punishment for traitors during military rule.

Years later, declassified US State Department documents revealed the reason for the CIA's interest in Montesinos. In the 1970s, Peru was ruled by the only left-wing regime in South America, a continent dominated by right-wing governments. Locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and fearing its influence in the region, as well as that of Cuba's communist government, the United States was seeking information on Peru's military activities. Montesinos conjured up and told a story about a possible armed intervention by Peru against Chile, which was ruled by Pinochet, an ally of the United States. The military operation would have the support of the Cuban regime and had the objective of recovering the territory that Peru had lost after the War of the Pacific.

Defense against drug traffickers

After being discharged in 1976, he falsified documents to pretend that he continued his law studies at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Two years later, on July 24, 1978, he received his law degree. According to several journalistic reports, the graduation or title as a lawyer is not recorded in any book of the Central Registry Office of the University of San Marcos, so Montesinos never regularly obtained his professional title of lawyer, due to the lack of supporting documents. of the issuance of the title.

He registered as a lawyer in the Superior Court of Lima on August 15, 1978 and later joined the Lima Bar Association, beginning to legally represent Colombian and Peruvian tax evaders and drug traffickers in court and police officers involved in the crime. drug trafficking; in the 1980s.

Between 1980 and 1983, he collaborated with the daily Kausachum, directed by the ex-spokesman of deposed President Juan Velasco Alvarado, Augusto Zimmerman, with data on wiretapping within the Army. General Armando Briceño, tired of his accusations, threatened to reopen the trial for treason. That fact and a series of publications in Caretas magazine led him to leave the country and remain in Argentina. Two years later, he returned to Peru and in 1985 he defended all the Police Chiefs and businessmen accused in the Villa Coca Padrino Case, alias of Reynaldo Rodríguez López, the most powerful drug trafficker at the time. He acquitted the defendants, who were acquitted of the tax accusation during the Aprista government of Alan García Pérez.

Fujimorato

Political repression

In 1990, he regained public notoriety for defending the candidate of the Cambio 90 party, Alberto Fujimori, against accusations of fraud and irregular real estate transactions. Fujimori's then adviser, Absalón Vásquez, presented him as a lawyer and shortly after the evidence of his crimes was distorted by the legal advice of Montesinos.

After Fujimori assumed the government, he was elevated to the status of Advisor to the Head of the Intelligence Service. On April 5, 1992, Fujimori proceeded to suspend the 1979 Constitution, dissolve Congress and order the reorganization of the Judiciary. Montesinos exerted influence so that they dismiss the judges who did not submit to the designs of his boss and measures were taken against all the written and spoken press, censoring the media from the night of the coup.

Fujimori continued with his campaign of political domination, dismissing several police generals who were contrary to his government.

Anti-terrorism actions

Montesinos collaborated on the "law of repentance" materialized in Decree Law No. 25497 of 1992 during the Fujimori government. Said legal norm was conceived and designed from the National Intelligence Service (SIN), with the purpose of obtaining information and hitting the supporters of the terrorist networks.

During the validity of the repentance law, 8,226 terrorists took advantage of the benefits established in it. One of those repentant was the senderista Luis Alberto Arana Franco, alias Manuel, who was the person who provided the members of the GEIN from Dincote with the information that made it possible to locate and capture Abimael Guzmán, Elena Iparraguirre Revoredo and three members of the Central Committee.

Fujimori arranged for Vladimiro Montesinos, as head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) to make contact with these terrorists so that they would stop their attitude. Thus, Montesinos formulated the Intelligence Plan "Misti 92" which consisted of engaging in conversations with the terrorist leaders in order to obtain information. The plan culminated at the end of 1995, when the terrorist network Sendero Luminoso divided into two antagonistic blocs: The splinter bloc PROSEGUIR, which sought the continuation of the internal war in the country and was commanded by Óscar Ramírez Durand (a) Feliciano and had as his lieutenants Víctor Quispe Palomino (a) José and Leonardo Huamaní Zúñiga (a) Alipio, establishing the VRAEM as his area of operations. The other bloc, led by Abimael Guzmán, proposed the cessation of terrorist operations throughout the country under the slogans of "moving from times of war to times of peace" and from "political struggle with weapons to political struggle without weapons." ^{[citation required]}

These facts have been recognized by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in its book Hatun Willakuy where it states: «The only point conceded by Montesinos was to facilitate the movement of Senderista leaders through the prisons to align the militants with Guzmán's proposal. His obvious purpose was to achieve the split of the PCP-SL, an objective that he achieved (...) ».

Political and media takeover

In 1996, the Congress of the Republic (already in the hands of Fujimori and Montesinos) rejected an opposition project to investigate Montesinos. That same year, drug trafficker Demetrio Chávez, alias Vaticano, was arrested, later declaring that he paid Montesinos USD 50,000 a month in exchange for his protection, which he later retracted. The statements of this drug trafficker gave rise in 2001 to a long judicial process where the Fourth Criminal Settlement Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Lima, on December 20, 2013, acquitted him of the alleged crime. The case was elevated to the Permanent Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Republic, entity that ratified the acquittal of Vladimiro Montesinos. ^{[citation required]}

In 1997, the television network Frecuencia Latina belonging to businessman Baruch Ivcher, who is suspected of having a business partnership with Montesinos -but according to journalist Sally Bowen "for reasons unknown to date" ended up fighting with him- issued a complaint where the agent of the Army Intelligence Service (SIE) Leonor La Rosa, was tortured by military agents. That same year, the decapitated body of another SIE agent, Mariela Barreto, was found. The government withdrew the Peruvian nationality from the owner of the channel.

Fall

Vladivideo where Vladimiro Montesinos is appreciated by delivering USD 350 000 to Ernesto Schutz to control the editorial line of Panamericana Televisión (1998).

In September 2000, congressmen Fernando Olivera Vega and Luis Iberico showed a video (the first vladivideo) to the entire country, in which Montesinos gave US$15,000 to opposition congressman Alberto Kouri to go to the ranks of Fujimori's party, Peru 2000. When the video was broadcast on an open signal through Channel N, Fujimori decided to intervene in the house of his ex-wife, Trinidad Becerra, under the name of a false prosecutor to extract evidence that could incriminate him. A week later, Montesinos traveled to Panama and in October he returned to Peru to later leave on a sailboat to an unknown whereabouts. While Fujimori pretended to make efforts trying to locate him in a suburb of Chaclacayo. Due to Montesinos' strategy of recording all his meetings (without the knowledge of his interlocutors), there are a large number of vladivideos and vladiaudios (films and voice recordings) where he is observed at the height of his power distributing money and favors to Peruvian businessmen and politicians, among them the television businessmen Ernesto Schutz Landazuri, José Enrique Crousillat and his son José Francisco Crousillat, the banker Dionisio Romero Seminario and some Chilean businessmen (see Lucchetti Case).

Flight to Venezuela

On Sunday, June 24, 2001, at El Junquito, km 3, second street of the Niño Jesús sector, a poor neighborhood in western Caracas, he woke up to a small group of journalists photographing the facade of a house that stood out in the area for being larger and less humble than the others, where he was captured and deported to Peru to face trials for drug trafficking of which he was acquitted, illicit enrichment, mediate homicide in the fight against terrorism and money laundering (acquitted). His stay in Venezuela was a matter of internal politics. For months before he was captured, the Venezuelan press regularly published indications of Montesinos' presence and opposition politicians accused the government of protecting him, facts the government denied and sometimes ridiculed. For her investigation into the presence of Montesinos in Venezuela, journalist Patricia Poleo received the King of Spain Journalism Award in 2001. During that period, representatives of the Peruvian government visited Venezuela on several occasions and the official Peruvian press agency reported that On one of those visits, the Minister of the Interior of that country had delivered evidence of the presence of Montesinos in Venezuela to the Venezuelan government. This information was not officially confirmed by either of the two governments.

Trial and prison

Currently, he is being held at the Callao Naval Base, sharing, separately, confinement with the leaders of the Shining Path terrorist networks: Abimael Guzmán Reinoso (a) Gonzalo, Oscar Ramírez Durand (a) Feliciano and Florindo Flores Hala (a) Artemio and from the MRTA: Víctor Polay Campos (a) Rolando and Miguel Rincón Rincón (a) Francisco, against whom he fought from the National Intelligence Service (SIN) in the 1990s.

The Peruvian government asked the Central Intelligence Agency to declassify information to facilitate the investigation into Montesinos. In 2002 the Federal Office of Justice in Bern (OFI) reported that Peru's anti-corruption prosecutor Julio Arbizu was on tour in Bern to trace frozen accounts in the name of Vladimiro Montesinos that were later repatriated to Lima and that totaled some 49.5 million US dollars. Product of crimes of corruption and illegal commissions in the delivery of weapons to the Peruvian state.

On October 1, 2010, the First Special Criminal Chamber resolved to sentence Vladimiro Montesinos and other military members of the Colina Group to twenty-five years of effective punishment for the massacre in Barrios Altos and the disappearance and death of Pedro Yauri. The sentence was confirmed by the supreme court as in the case of former President Alberto Fujimori. Who was also sentenced to twenty-five years as "mediate author" for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta Case.

Posts

Montesinos is the author of seven books on intelligence and counterintelligence topics:

• Chess pawnpolitical analysis on the Latin American left.
• Idols of mud, analysis and study of Cuban and Venezuelan intelligence networks.
• War without faceanalysis of Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist networks.
• Without Path, Early Warningexamines action of the Shining Path terrorist network in the twenty-first century.
• Chilean espionage, special intelligence operations against the Peruvian Statedescribes how their military intelligence apparatus operates in Peru.
• Without Path, Early Warning IIwarns of the implications for the National Security of the reconstitution of the Shining Path terrorist network.
• Military operation Chavín de Huántar. WITH THE TERRORISM, narrates the background and details of how it was planned and executed.