Lima – Peru’s independent National Human Rights Coordinator has issued a report backing claims that presidential candidate Ollanta Humala committed crimes against humanity as an army officer in the 1990s campaign against Maoist rebels.
The 43-year-old former colonel, tied in polls with conservative Lourdes Flores in the run-up to the April 9 elections, is already under investigation by government prosecutors.
The accusations emerged in January, as victims of army abuses said that seeing Humala’s face on television and in the newspapers made them realize he was the man they had once known by the nom de guerre of “Capitan Carlos.”
Humala, a left-leaning nationalist, denies the charges and claims they are part of a conspiracy to sabotage his bid for the presidency.
The report released late Wednesday by the Coordinator, a coalition of dozens of non-governmental human rights groups, looks at how the military battled Shining Path rebels in eastern Peru in the early 1990s.
The probe concluded that Humala was commander of the eastern jungle base of Madre Mia from January to July of 1992 and again from November 1992 to July 1993, and that he spent the gap between those periods in an undetermined region of the jungle.
Three residents of the region – Jorge Avila, Aurea Felipe and Maria Magdalena Sullca – are cited as saying that Humala was linked to kidnappings, arbitrary arrests and torture.
The witnesses said all of the abuses took place during the periods of Humala’s posting at Madre Mia.
Avila told the Coordinator’s investigators he was arrested along with his sister and brother-in-law and that he would have been killed as they were if he had not escaped by jumping into the Huallaga River, a tributary of the Amazon.
Javier Saravia Alanya accuses Humala of presiding over arbitrary detention and torture at Madre Mia in January 1993.
Also coming forward to denounce the presidential hopeful are Victoria Zonia Luis Cristobal and her husband, Cirilo Rosales Tabraj, who say that a squadron of soldiers under Humala’s command beat them and looted their store and residence. Victoria claims that “Capitan Carlos” personally shaved her head in the course of the assault.
Ollanta Humala’s army service record indicates that he was leading patrols in the province of Ayacucho during the first half of 1985, when the fighting between the army and Shining Path was at its peak.
