Free Lori Berenson

Lori Berenson has been held in Peruvian prisons for five years [front page, Nov. 4] and at present is awaiting a "civilian trial" although there is no evidence that a civilian trial in Peru would be any fairer than the military one she already had.

I too, was a political prisoner in Peru, arrested in 1993 and held under the charge of "Apology for Terrorism" after I photographed the insurgent group, the MRTA. Under the Peruvian regime, my crime was simply taking pictures of an armed opposition.

During my detention I was made to listen as guards raped and tortured several prisoners. When, after several days, the U.S. Embassy finally got hold of me, the first question out of the consular officer's mouth was "How did they torture you?" not "Were you tortured?" Torture was matter-of-factly accepted by the U.S. Embassy in Lima, an embassy that has ignored Ms. Berenson's plight.

The corrupt and totalitarian U.S.-backed Peruvian regime headed by intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos and ex-president Alberto Fujimori, which Ms. Berenson had irked, is on the run and discredited. In this power vacuum, the U.S. Embassy could easily act to get her released now.

It is not too late for the United States to try to make up for the harm it did supporting a dictatorship, first in the name of anticommunism, then in the name of fighting drugs.

At the least, the United States can and should get Ms. Berenson released.

JEREMY BIGWOOD

Washington