19 ten days of being bound over for trial, before a court of faceless military judges. The law did not allow persons who took part in arrests to testify, and the only evidence permitted were documents attesting to the person's honor. Arrests of persons accused of terrorism were carried out with great violence by policemen, and a prosecutor who played virtually no role because he did not identify himself as such and did nothing to ensure that the detainee's rights were respected; nor were the detainees informed of the charges against them or the guarantees to which they were entitled. Habeas corpus was prohibited in cases of terrorism. He went on to say that María Elena Loayza-Tamayo had been detained on the accusation of a repentant terrorist, whom no one had ever been able to question; Ms. Loayza was accused of being a "Shining Path" leader code-named "Rita"; a curious fact is that more than one "comadre Rita" subsequently appeared in other case files, which was contradictory inasmuch as the aliases of the leaders were never the same; the only evidence against them was that they were, often falsely, denounced by repentant terrorists, so that the accusers could reap the benefits of the Ley de Arrepentimiento (Law Repentant), including that of keeping the repentant's identity secret, thus restricting the defendant's right of defense. He further testified that the detainees were held incommunicado, and that María Elena Loayza-Tamayo was tortured and raped; many persons had been taken to the beach to be tortured by drunken policemen; what is more, the detainees did not report their torture because they were afraid, and because of the possibility of availing themselves of the Amnesty Law; the crime of torture was not codified in Peruvian legislation; the only complaint that could be brought was that of injury or abuse of authority. He said that the defense had been obstructed, inasmuch as access to the case file needed to be sought in writing; only 15 minutes were allowed for a meeting with the defendant and those meetings never took place in private. María Elena Loayza-Tamayo was acquitted of the crime of treason, but was never released; she had been brought before the civil courts, where she was subjected to a second trial for the same acts, and convicted after she had been acquitted by the military court. In the civil court the judges sat behind a dark glass and were not visible, and their voices were distorted; they could not be recused because this was not permitted by Peruvian legislation and because the identity of the judges was unknown. The normal procedure comprised a pretrial phase, after which the judge and the prosecutor handed down a decision which was then referred to the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, where the oral proceeding took place; in that court neither the judge nor the prosecutor wore hoods. In conclusion, the witness told the Court that a state of emergency had existed in Peru since the upsurge of political violence, but that a group of basic rights were still protected; however, the counter-insurgency legislation did not permit petitions of habeas corpus during a state of emergency. g. Testimony of Iván Arturo Bazán-Chacón Iván Bazán-Chacón, defense attorney for witness Pedro Telmo Vega-Valle, testified that in 1992 a political process had taken place in Peru; it was known as the National Reconstruction Process, and in it President Alberto Fujimori had dissolved Congress, reorganized the Judiciary and the Ministry of the Interior, dissolved the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees and the National Council of the Judiciary, and initiated a period of emission of legislation by means of decree-laws, on account of the grave political and social problem caused by the escalation of the violence and the destruction inflicted by subversive elements; the list of crimes was expanded to include the new crime of treason; the military jurisdiction was also expanded and authorized to prosecute civilians on charges of treason, imposing restrictions on the right of defense, and keeping secret the identity of the military judges and the