A 40-year-old New York native who was convicted of helping leftist guerrillas in Peru has been paroled after serving 15 years of her 20-year sentence, according to news reports.
The AP
says the Peruvian judge granted house arrest to
Lori Berenson, who was 25 years old in 1995 when she was arrested on a bus in Peru on charges of being a leader of the
Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The Marxist rebels were active from the early 1980s until being crushed in the late 1990s.
Berenson, who attended MIT but left before graduating, was convicted of unlawful collaboration with a terrorist organization. She has maintained that she never took up arms with the guerrillas. Active in left-wing causes in El Salvador, she had moved to Lima and rented a house that became a safe house for rebels.
Reuters says she sat quietly today as the ruling was read, wrapped in a shawl with her hair pulled back. She has been living in the prison in a Lima neighborhood with the son she gave birth to last year.
**Posted by Michael Winter
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/05/peru-paroles-ny-native-jailed-15-years-for-aiding-leftists--/1
