7. By a communication dated December 1, 2003, the State submitted Report No. 077-2003JUS/CND-SE, prepared by the Executive Secretariat of the National Human Rights Council in response to the complaint filed. The information supplied by the State was forwarded to the petitioners by note of December 4, 2003. On December 10, 2003, the Commission received a communication from APRODEH conveying its observations on the State’s reply. III. POSITIONS OF THE PARTIES A. The petitioners 8. The petitioners reported that on December 17, 1996, a commando of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), under the command of a Peruvian citizen by the name of Néstor Cerpa Cartolini, attacked the residence of the Ambassador of Japan in Peru as a party celebrating the birthday of Emperor Akihito was in progress. They initially took 379 people– Peruvian citizens and foreign nationals-hostage. These people were slowly released because the guerrilla group had entered into talks with government emissaries. 9. On the afternoon of April 22, 1997, an operation was conducted to rescue the hostages. In that operation, called "Chavín de Huántar," all members of the MRTA who had seized the residence died. According to the official account, the assailants died fighting the military forces. In an interview with the newspaper El Comercio, published on December 17, 1997, then President Alberto Fujimori stated that shortly after the embassy residence was seized, the President, the National Intelligence Service headed by Julio Salazar Monroe and Vladimiro Montesinos Torres, and the Joint Command of the Armed Forces under Army Commander General Nicolás de Bari Hermoza Rios had planned the operation to retake the residence. 10. Among the military commandos who participated in the rescue operation was Peruvian Army Colonel Roberto Huaman Azcurra, tried for his involvement in the corruption scandal and implicated in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres. Also taking part was Peruvian Army Colonel Jesús Zamudio Aliaga, now a fugitive from justice. He was known as "ZAJ" and as "El Chacal", from his time in Ayacucho in the mid 1980s where he formed “Lince,” an antisubversive group known for its involvement in human rights violations. 11. When the military rescue operation was over, the bodies were removed by military prosecutors; representatives from the Attorney General’s Office were not permitted entry. The corpses were not taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for the autopsy required by law; in a highly irregular move, the bodies were taken instead to the morgue at the Police Hospital. It was there that the autopsies would be performed. The autopsy reports were kept secret until 2001. Next of kin of the deceased were not allowed to be present for the identification of the bodies and the autopsies. The bodies were buried in secrecy in various cemeteries throughout Lima. The mother of one of the victims, Mrs. Eligia Rodriguez Bustamante, and the Deputy Director of APRODEH asked the Attorney General’s Office to take the necessary steps to identify those who died when the ambassador’s residence was retaken, but the Attorney General’s Office conceded its jurisdiction to identify the deceased members of the MRTA, handing it over to the military justice system instead. 2 12. The truth about what happened in the rescue operation remained secret until the fall of the Fujimori regime. However, stories of extrajudicial executions of surrendered MRTA members began to circulate not long after the rescue operation. On December 18, 2000, the newspaper El Comercio carried a story in which the former first secretary of the Japanese Embassy in 2 On orders from Attorney General Miguel Aljovin Swayne, on May 7 the Deputy Supreme Prosecutor forwards the resolution issued that same date, May 7, 1997, which reads as follows: “Having seen official memorandum zero seventeen hyphen FG SCJM, sent by Navy Captain Moisés Pérez Díaz (CJ), Deputy Prosecutor General for the Supreme Council of Military Justice, in connection with the status of the proceeding in the military courts concerning the military raid on the residence of the Japanese ambassador on the twenty-second of April of nineteen hundred ninety-seven: NOTIFY the Deputy Director of the Pro Human Rights Association and doña Eligia Rodríguez Bustamante of this resolution, so that they can exercise their right before the Special Military Tribunal of the Army’s second military zone; a copy of the memorandum is to be sent to the Ombudsman for his information and the pertinent purposes.” 2