Faceless military and civilian courts, conducting secret trials behind prison walls, continue to sentence Peruvians to decades of imprisonment in life-threatening conditions without offering them the basic judicial process guarantees required by international human rights law. We recognize such a situation exists, and we are doing all we can. You have no recourses at all. She was tried and sentenced to life in prison last Jan. 11. She is being held at a prison high up in the Andes, in a cell with no glass on the windows despite freezing temperatures at night.
Food is scarce, and the cells are bare.
Of the estimated 5,000 people jailed for crimes of terrorism or treason since 1992, the National Coordinator of Human Rights identified 1,504 as probably being innocent. Another 110 were pardoned after their cases were reviewed by a special board. But 598 remain in prison, trying to get their cases reviewed. Thirty-one are fugitive escapees. Rosa Alvarez was among those eventually found not guilty, but not before spending a year in a cell.