Peru reopens death squad inquiry

A 1995 amnesty protected the military from prosecution

Peru's Supreme Court has ordered a fresh investigation into the 1991 massacre of 15 people by a paramilitary death squad with links to the armed forces.

Peruvian human rights groups believe the attackers were hired by the former intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, to quash the left-wing rebel Shining Path movement.

Those suspected of killing the 15 party-goers, apparently mistaken for guerrillas, have been protected by a police and military amnesty passed by the ousted President Alberto Fujimori in 1995.

That pardon was revoked last week by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, the legal arm of the Organisation of American States.

The announcement of a new investigation follows the arrests last weekend of two former intelligence generals alleged to have been linked to the killings.

111 bullets

General Juan Rivera, former head of the now extinct National Intelligence Service, and General Julio Salazar Monroe, head of the Army's Intelligence Service, are accused of having links to the death squad known as the Colina group.

Montesinos is said to have formed the death squads

Earlier this week, special attorney Ronald Gamarra announced that 13 arrests warrants against suspected members of the group had been issued.

In the November 1991 attack, at least six masked gunmen burst into a small apartment in the Barrios Altos district of Lima, a poor neighbourhood close to the presidential palace, and made a group of party-goers lie face down on the floor.

Using pistols and automatic weapons fitted with silencers, they fired into the group, killing 15 people and injuring four.

Police said they found 111 bullet shells in the apartment after the attack.

Incompatible amnesty

Local media reported at the time that the death squad mistook the party for a secret meeting of Shining Path rebels.

Some members of the Colina group were later imprisoned for the assassination of nine students and a teacher at La Cantuta University in 1992.

Their convictions were quashed and they were released from prison under the 1995 amnesty, which protected police and the military from prosecution.

Following the Inter-American tribunal's ruling that the amnesty is incompatible with the American Convention on Human Rights, the case will now be re-opened.