Peruvian President Grants Amnesty to Hundreds Accused of Crimes

(Patria) - The President of Peru signed a controversial new law granting amnesty to soldiers, police officers, and civilian militias facing charges for crimes committed during a two-decade armed conflict against Maoist rebels, BBC reported.

Dina Boluarte enacted the measure, approved by Congress in July, despite an order from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to suspend it pending a review of its impact on victims.

The law will benefit hundreds of members of the armed forces, police, and self-defense committees accused of crimes committed between 1980 and 2000. It will also order the release of those over seventy years old serving sentences for such acts.

During the conflict, the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru rebel groups led insurgencies in which, according to Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an estimated 70,000 people were killed and more than 20,000 disappeared.

Boluarte, elected in 2022 as the country's first female president, stated that the Peruvian government honors the forces that, she said, fought against terrorism and in defense of democracy.

Human rights organizations have condemned the law. Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, called it a "betrayal of Peruvian victims" that "undermines decades of efforts to ensure accountability for crimes".

United Nations experts and Amnesty International had called on Boluarte to veto the law, saying it violates Peru's duty to investigate and prosecute grave abuses, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture, and sexual violence.

UN experts said the amnesty could halt or overturn more than 600 pending trials and 156 convictions. The TRC found that state agents, particularly the armed forces, were responsible for 83% of documented cases of sexual violence.

Last year, Peru adopted a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity committed before 2002, effectively closing hundreds of investigations into alleged atrocities committed during the fighting.

The initiative benefited the late President Alberto Fujimori, who was imprisoned for crimes including the massacre of civilians by the military, but was released from prison in 2023 for humanitarian reasons. He died in September 2024.

Meanwhile, former president Martín Vizcarra has been ordered into five months of preventive detention for allegedly receiving $640,000 in bribes while he was governor of Moquegua between 2011 and 2014. He is the fifth former president to be jailed in corruption investigations.