Lori Berenson

Who is Lori Berenson?

Lori Helene Berenson is an American convicted in Peru in 1996 of unlawful collaboration with the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a group which had tried to overthrow the Peruvian government by force and which was and is considered a terrorist organization by the Peruvian government. The MRTA was designated on the official "terrorist organization" list of the U.S. State Department during the years 1997-2001. Her arrest and conviction, and the circumstances of her trials, provoked considerable attention in the United States and in Peru.

After securing press credentials for herself and a photographer, visiting Peru's Congress to interview some of its members and attend sessions where she took notes and sketched a seating plan, Berenson was arrested on a public bus along with the photographer. Her photographer turned out to be the wife of a top MRTA leader, a fact Berenson stated she was unaware of at that time. The MRTA is alleged to have intended to use the information to seize lawmakers and exchange the hostages for imprisoned MRTA members. The house she rented in Lima was found to contain an arsenal of weapons and ammunition, together with armed guerrillas who violently resisted capture. She denied knowing of the presence of the weaponry or guerillas, or that the documents she prepared would be used for terrorism. In 2011 she admitted that she had known her associates were MRTA members and said: “It might not have been intentional, but the bottom line is: I did collaborate with them." In the same interview she maintained that she had not been aware that weapons were being amassed in the upper floors of her house which she had sublet to the MRTA members, or that violent actions were being planned at the Congress, stating that “at that time in Fujimori’s dictatorship, Congress was the only place that there was some sort of democratic process.”