Peru oven linked to death squad

The Fujimori regime is blamed for hundreds of deaths

A former Peruvian agent has testified that a furnace at army intelligence headquarters may have been used to incinerate victims of a death squad, a congressional investigator says.

Congresswoman Anel Townsend, who chairs a committee that is investigating ex-President Alberto Fujimori's government, said she would send the unnamed agent's statements to prosecutors.

A witness says that the incinerator may have had a purpose as grave as, for example, being used to incinerate remains

Anel Townsend

"Testimonies we have received... are that this incinerator, as well as being used to destroy documents, also had a criminal purpose," she said.

Ms Townsend's committee is investigating claims by another former intelligence agent and Mr Fujimori's ex-wife that they were held in a torture chamber in the basement of army intelligence headquarters several years ago.

A news conference was shown a videotape of the former agent, now in a wheelchair, in a basement where she said she was tortured in 1997 on suspicion of leaking government secrets.

It is claimed the torture was carried out by the Colina group - a paramilitary death squad allegedly run by former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos.

Students tortured

The video also showed a brick oven in another basement at the headquarters in Lima.

"A witness... says that the incinerator may have had a purpose as grave as, for example, being used by the Colina group to incinerate remains," Ms Townsend said.

She said there could be a link with one of Peru's most notorious human rights atrocities.

Peru wants to bring Alberto Fujimori back from Japan

In 1992 nine students from the La Cantuta university and their professor were kidnapped and tortured and their charred bodies buried.

Mr Fujimori has been charged with sanctioning the murders as well as the 1991 killings of 15 partygoers, including an eight-year-old boy, by the same death squad.

The former president has been in self-exile in Japan - where his parents were born - since November 2000, when a corruption scandal involving Mr Montesinos toppled his 10-year rule.

Both Mr Fujimori and Mr Montesinos deny any wrongdoing.

Mr Montesinos is being held at a naval base jail awaiting trial on corruption and human rights abuse charges.