23 the civil courts in the Judiciary, by establishing the annulment of the judgment in the oral trial and the possibility of declaring that the Superior Criminal Prosecutor’s charge was unsubstantiated. The same decree allowed the prosecutor’s charge to be contested, and virtually annulled. It also established that the trial should be held in the ordinary jurisdiction, substituting the procedural rules of Decree Law No. 25,475 by those of the Peruvian ordinary criminal proceedings. The legislative decrees of February 2003 established a period of 60 days for the National Terrorism Chamber to declare the annulment of both the oral trials in treason cases and the cases tried under Decree Law No. 25,475. Once the judgment in the trial had been annulled, and the failure to substantiate the Superior Criminal Prosecutor’s charge had been declared, the files would be forwarded immediately to the Superior Criminal Prosecutor so that he could re-formulate the charge. The new trial would begin when the annulment had been declared. Trials are now public in Peru, it is possible to question the witnesses, whether they are individuals who have witnessed terrorist acts or police agents who have taken part in preparing the police depositions. It is also possible to question the “arrepentidos”, and to know their identities. As for an evaluation of the actions of the National Terrorism Chamber, and the number of people absolved, who had previously been convicted of terrorism or treason, it can be observed that the way the Chamber assesses the evidence is different from the way it was assessed in the judgments handed down by the “faceless” judges or the military judges. Many people have appealed their prison sentences in new trials; however, the National Terrorism Chamber has annulled very few of them. Pursuant to Legislative Decree No. 926, recent trials are based on the police depositions. Previously, it was not possible to contest the content of the police deposition and the alleged evidence that the police had gathered or established during the preliminary investigation. In the new trials, this can be contested during the pre-trial investigation and the oral proceeding. According to Legislative Decree No. 926, trials must be public; otherwise, the proceeding is null. The legal grounds for the imprisonment of those prosecuted after the annulments under Legislative Decree No. 926, is an extremely controversial issue. The Constitutional Court issued a ruling to the effect that the prison sentences should be established in light, not of the terrorism legislation, but of the criminal procedural legislation, specifically Article 135 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, on the measures and the circumstances in which a judge can hand down a prison sentence, combined with Legislative Decree No. 926, which determines that the annulment of the proceedings, the sentences, the trials and the charges does not produce the release of the defendants. The maximum period of detention, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure is 36 months, calculated from the start of the new trial. Consequently, the time spent in prison under the previous proceeding is disregarded.