26. The petitioner also claims that the principles of due process, res judicata,legality, and
statutory limitations were ignored by the Peruvian State.
27. With reference to the principle of due process, the complainant claims to have challenged
several police statements at his second criminal trial, on the grounds that the statements were
taken with ex officio lawyers appointed by police authorities. In this connection, the petitioner
pointed out that the Constitutional Court had determined the unconstitutionality of Article 12(f)
of Decree Law No. 25475, which stipulated that the police authorities were responsible for
appointing ex officio counsel; and that, consequently, statements given under such
circumstances were to be held null and void. However, the National Terrorism Chamber ruled
that those statements “were given in accordance with the formalities of Articles 62 and 72 of the
Code of Criminal Procedure; in other words, with the presence of the prosecutor and of the
defense counsel, and so cannot be ruled invalid or false.”9
28. With respect to the principle of res judicata, the petitioner claims that he was acquitted in
his first criminal trial for the crime of collaboration with terrorism, but that the National Terrorism
Chamber of Lima, ignoring the earlier decision, in its judgment of February 24, 2004 sentenced
him to a ten-year prison term and to a payment of 1000 nuevos soles to the Peruvian State as
civil damages. The petitioner reports that the argument used by the National Terrorism Chamber
to ignore res judicata was that Mr. Pollo Rivera’s two criminal trials were for separate incidents,
since the first solely addressed his collaboration in a surgical operation on one specific member
of the terrorist organization.
29. With respect to the principle of legality, the petitioner reports that his defense counsel
claimed an exception based on the nature of the action or the principle of legality in his second
criminal trial, whereby no person may be prosecuted or convicted for an action or an omission
that, at the time of its commission, was not fully, expressly, and unequivocally defined in law as
a punishable offense (Article 2, section d, paragraph 24 of the Constitution of Peru). The
petitioner states that the National Terrorism Chamber ruled the exception based on the nature
of the action groundless, arguing that the act of providing medical assistance to members of the
subversive group Shining Path, while itself licit, was illegitimate because it took place in secret
and was not reported to the authorities as required by Article 407 of the Criminal Code “in order
to protect the right of all Peruvians to security and social peace.” The Chamber thus did not find
that the purpose was that of exercising medicine, but rather that of promoting the goals of the
terrorist organization. The petitioner quotes a section from the Chamber’s judgment stating that:
“The State cannot be required to protect medical intervention intended to preserve the health of
an “injured” party; on the contrary, the prevailing obligation is that of protecting society from
actions, such as those carried out by Shining Path, which not only endangered our country’s
democratic stability, but also the lives of the Peruvians who, in many of their attacks, were killed
as a result of violence.”
30. Additionally, the petitioner claims that the principle of legality was violated by the Supreme
Court of Justice’s interpretation, holding that the list of terrorist collaboration actions set out in
Article 4, sections (a) to (f), of Decree Law No. 25475 are examples of behaviors constituting
terrorist collaboration and not an exhaustive list. The petitioner claims that the violation of the
principle of legality took place since the practice of medicine is a form of behavior not expressly
defined as a crime of terrorist collaboration by the country’s criminal law.10
The petitioner cites the judgment of the National Terrorism Chamber; case file No. 001-00, Lima, February 24, 2004,
p. 36.
10
To better illustrate this, the complainant cites the judgment of the Permanent Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court
of Justice of Lima, R.N. No. 1062-2004-LIMA, which declared that Mr. Luis Williams Pollo Rivera’s conviction was not
subject to annulment and stated, in its sixth “whereas” clause, that: “The crime of terrorist collaboration, in the different
ways in which it has been legally defined since its placement on the national criminal statute books, punishes those who
are in any way related to the material execution of any collaborative act that favors the commission of terrorist crimes
or the pursuit of the goals of a terrorist group. Without prejudice of repeating what was said in the Supreme Decree of
Execution of December 20, 2004, it should also be said that the relevant acts of collaboration must, first, be related to
the activities and goals of the terrorist organization, and, second, they must materially favor terrorist activities per se –
mere support or moral backing is not punishable; collaborative actions in the criminal activities of the organization are
required. The criminalized action must therefore contribute, by its very nature, to the attainment or pursuit of a given
goal: favoring the commission of terrorist crimes or the pursuit of the goals of the terrorist organization. It should also
be noted that when the law refers to “any collaborative act” or “acts of collaboration that in any way favor,” it is to be
9
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