9 with terrorists, for which a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment was set. The penalties for the crimes of terrorism were extremely severe. Decree Law No. 25,475 of May 6, 1992, came into being as a result of the closing of Congress by the then President Alberto Fujimori on May 5, 1992. In those circumstances, the President of the Republic adopted numerous decree laws as a way of legislating matters of national importance. The said decree law establishes the following categories of terrorism: terrorism, aggravated terrorism, collaboration in acts of terrorism, membership in terrorist organizations, instigation of terrorist acts, and repetition of terrorist acts. There was little difference between the basic crime of terrorism defined in Article 2 of Decree Law No. 25,475 and the crime defined in the 1991 Penal Code, because it continued to be an open category with various alternative behaviors. Moreover, it described acts such as collaboration as an independent crime, when it could be considered complicity, which distorted the latter’s raison d'être. The differences between the 1991 Penal Code and Decree Law No. 25,475 included an increase in the system of penalties, because life imprisonment was even established for the crime of aggravated terrorism; also, new criminal categories were established, such as instigation of terrorist acts, justification of terrorism, obstruction of justice by the crime of terrorism, and repetition of terrorist acts. The principal characteristic of the new legislation was “the possibility that it could be used as an instrument for punishing behaviors that were indeed crimes, and also for over-criminalizing acts that, from a rational point of view, should not determine that a legal right had been affected”; in other words, “it opened the door to the possibility that any behavior the authoritarian regime did not like c[ould] be included as a terrorist act. Furthermore, Decree Law No. 25,475 contained new procedural norms and rules for the execution of punishments. Among the former (procedural), it is worth underscoring the following: the absolute incommunicado of the defendant during the preliminary investigation stage, the intervention of the lawyer after the defendant had made his first statement, exclusion of any kind of liberty (except unconditional), the appointment of judges ad hoc, private hearings during the oral judgment, the appointment of “faceless” judges, the inadmissibility of objections to the judges, and the appointment of judges with competence at the national level. The latter (execution of punishments), included the exclusion of prison benefits, and solitary confinement for the person convicted. Decree Law No. 25,475 attempted to establish a “harsh system with the exclusive intention of ending terrorism, but which [...] also included obvious excess [which] violate[d] human rights.” In the context of an action on unconstitutionality filed against Decree Laws No. 25,475, 25,659, 25,708, 25,880 and 25,744, the Constitutional Court of Peru delivered a judgment on January 3, 2003, in which it referred to the anti-terrorist legislation and made some relevant declarations.