20 Legislative Decree No. 635 of April 3, 1991, enacted the Peruvian Criminal Code, which annulled the previous body of criminal rules and included in its Title XIV, Chapter II, “Crimes against Public Peace,” containing the different types of crimes of terrorism. This anti-terrorist legislation described a crime based on danger, i.e. a conduct which was punishable because of the mere potential harm to the protected interest, no concrete harmful result being required. The description contained in Article 319 (crime of terrorism) of the 1991 Criminal Code amounted to an openended criminal definition, the purpose of which was to avoid the existence of impunity loopholes and let criminal courts, by way of interpretation of the rule, determine the scope of the criminal description. The Criminal Code referred to above established the following descriptions: terrorism, aggravated terrorism, collaboration with terrorism, membership in and affiliation with terrorist organizations, and disappearance of persons. This anti-terrorist legislation did no establish maximum penalties, with the exception of the crime of membership in a terrorist organization, which was punished with a maximum penalty of twenty years’ imprisonment. The penalties for the crimes of terrorism were of considerable severity. The basic description of the crime of terrorism as established in Article 2 of DecreeLaw No. 25.475 did not greatly depart from the one contained in the 1991 Criminal Code, as it was still an open-ended description which embraced alternative conducts. Furthermore, actions such as collaboration were described as a separate crime, rather than being construed as ‘aiding and abetting,’ which understated the latter legal classification. Among the differences between the Criminal Code of 1991 and Decree-Law No. 25.475 is the stiffening of penalties, as the latter even contemplated life imprisonment for the crime of aggravated terrorism, and included new criminal descriptions such as instigation of terrorist acts, terrorist advocacy, obstruction of justice by a terrorist act, and repeated terrorist acts. The main feature of the new legislation “w[as] that it could be used both for punishing acts that were actually criminal offenses and for overcriminalizing other activities which, from a reasonable stance, should not be considered to impair any protected legal right;” i.e., “the possibility was left dormant for any action not to the liking of the authoritarian regime to be construed as a terrorist act.” Decree-Law No. 25.475 aimed at establishing an “iron-hand system the purpose of which was exclusively to eradicate terrorism, but it also […] allowed for clear-cut excesses [which] w[ere] in violation of Human Rights.” Within the context of a constitutional motion filed against Decree-Laws Nos. 25.475, 25.659, 25.708, 25.880, and 25.744, the Constitutional Court of Peru passed a decision on January 3, 2003, wherein it referred to the anti-terrorist legislation and made some relevant explanatory notes thereon. Though it had been requested by the applicants, the Constitutional Court did not declare the unconstitutionality of Article 2 of Decree-Law No. 25.475, which described the crime of terrorism. The decision passed by the Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional) established three modalities for the interpretation of the criminal description of terrorism, which the expert considered to be wrong. In this respect, the judgment referred to above “di[d] not clear out the actual question raised by the constitutional [m]otion.”