Once a year, North Korea’s often vitriolic rhetoric machine fires up with special intensity to attack those who attack its human rights record. The exchanges usually come toward the end of the year when the U.N. General Assembly approves what has become an annual measure criticising North Korea for having one of the worst rights records in the world.

Reclusive North Korea is a member of only a few international organisations so the annual rebuke at the United Nations stings particularly hard for the state that bills itself as a workers’ paradise, or as it said in a state media report on Tuesday: “the best socialist state in the world as it is centred on the popular masses”.

North Korea comes under special scrutiny this year because it will be subject to official international questioning of its human rights record at the United Nations in December, which could provide even more embarrassment for the North’s thinned-skinned leaders as the prickly state is put on the defensive.
North Korea has prepared for this event by changing its Constitution earlier this year and adding clauses about human rights protections.

But many of the rights of North Korean citizens spelled out in the document are not carried out. For example, it guarantees freedom of assembly, but Pyongyang can send to political prison anyone who gathers without permission of authorities. The regime guarantees freedom of religion, but jails those who try to exercise the right. Privacy is a right, but the government’s large internal spy network keeps tabs on almost all citizens.

According to human rights groups, the United States and other leading democracies, North Korea maintains a vast political prison system to stamp out dissent. It intimidates the masses through public executions and by guilt by association where it can jail family members of those it accuses of crimes.

North Korea’s official media usually unleashes some of its harshest rhetoric during this human rights season, saying this is all part of a plot by a hostile United States to topple its leaders. Already this week, the North slammed “the ceaseless mean ‘human rights rackets’ kicked up by the U.S. and its followers.”

“This is nothing but a despicable plot to attain their sinister purposes by putting political pressure upon the DPRK (North Korea),” its KCNA news agency said.

The points to watch this year when North Korea is raked over the coals for its record are whether Pyongyang will use the criticism as a means to back away from international nuclear disarmament talks – as it has done previously – or if it will finally grant the request of Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea, to see for himself what is going on in one of the world’s most isolated states.

By Robin Emmott

Securing the United States’s border from illegal immigrants, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction “continues to be a major challenge,” says the United States Government Accountability Office in a new report. It is also proving to be expensive in both lives and money.

In dollar terms, the outlay is substantial. Every time someone breaks a hole in the U.S.-Mexico border wall, it costs about $1,300 to repair. The estimated cost of maintaining the 661-mile (1,058 km) double-layered fence along part of its 2,000-mile (3,000 km) border with Mexico over the next 20 years is $6.5 billion, the GAO report says. 

That is on top of the $3.7 billion allocated to the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative since 2005 to build a system of fencing, lighting, sensors, cameras and radars to keep out job-hungry immigrants, terrorists and smugglers.

While border agents say the wall is a tool that helps them protect the United States, the GAO report found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection cannot accurately determine the fence’s impact on improving border security, suggesting the money might not be well spent.

“What a waste in resources and creativity ,” said Jorge Mario Cabrera Valladares of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). “Our tax dollars are being wasted on an ineffective, old strategy instead of urgently working on serious, long term, workable immigration reform,” he said.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington of Sept. 11, 2001, political pressure for tighter border controls has grown sharply and supporters of the border wall argue it is effective in keeping unwanted foreigners out.

But some border experts say the wall does not stop those trying to get into the United States and only makes it more dangerous, greatly raising the fees charged by people smugglers who charge up to $2 billion every year in Arizona alone. 

Some 5,600 people have died trying to cross into the United States since the U.S. government under President Bill Clinton dramatically increased border security in 1994 with Operation Gatekeeper and the first stretch of fence between San Diego and Tijuana.

That is according to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH), based on Mexico’s foreign ministry and media reports, who say the death of migrants is an international humanitarian crisis.

Before the stepped-up enforcement operations, experts say most deaths were due to traffic accidents as migrants dashed across freeways in border areas. Today, most die from hypothermia in the desert or by drowning in the Rio Grande and irrigation canals.

The U.S. Border Patrol’s body count for border crossers this year points to the continued dangers. While the U.S. recession has caused a sharp drop in arrests on the borderline,  Customs and Border Protection has reported 416 deaths so far in 2009. That compares with 390 last year and 398 in 2007.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to push comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but the issue has little lawmaker support as Americans lose jobs in the recession.

(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor)

In Guinea this week, at least 157 people were killed when security forces opened fire on a demonstration against military junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, according to a local rights group.

Much has changed since I visited the country in April and May this year. Then, the young Camara -- or "Dadis" as most Guineans refer to him – did not look particularly dangerous despite his images staring out from walls, buildings and roundabouts all over Conakry, and cassettes of his speeches on sale in the markets.

"Long live peace" was the graffiti of choice, and if expectations of real improvements in living standards were low, at least soldiers were in the barracks rather than shooting in the streets.

What was clear then was that a certain degree of patience had been extended to Camara both domestically and internationally.

Relief that the power vacuum opened by the death of former President Lansana Conte had not collapsed into violence, and populist anti-corruption rhetoric carried most Guineans through the first uneasy months. At the same time the international community swallowed its distaste for a military regime with the sweetening promise of elections by the end of the year.

As long as peace and the election timetable held, and Camara himself wasn't tempted into standing, Guineans and foreign partners would grit their teeth and give Camara and his National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD) breathing space to
manage the transition.

That patience, which had shown signs of strain in recent months, has now run out. International condemnation has been swift and harsh for the deaths at the demonstration.

There could be two ways of reading Monday's use of deadly force.

If Camara is to be taken at face value when he says it isn't his fault, it might suggest a lack of control over security forces under his command – a potentially dangerous situation.

Otherwise, it would only feed the suspicions of those who see the junta as a gang of violent men whose interest extends no further than retaining power by any means.

Either way, Guineans and world bodies alike find themselves in a difficult situation.

Camara has shown little tolerance of criticism and for him to step aside voluntarily would appear almost inconceivable.

There may be little immediate leverage that organisations such as the United Nations, African Union or European Union could bring to bear.

Still, there is a sense that they are less willing to tolerate Camara than they are, for example, Mauritania's President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, whose route to power was also via a coup, but who has avoided bloodshed on the streets.

Even if Camara could be persuaded to go or were forced from power, however, what would replace him? Another strongman of the type who has ruled Guinea since independence in 1958? A ‘new beginning’ under the auspices of another man in camouflage gear and a red beret? Not many would envy Guineans their part in the cycle.

By Patrick Worsnip
    
What’s more important — the right of a sovereign state to manage its affairs free of outside interference or the duty of the international community to intervene when massive human rights violations are being committed in a country?
 
The United Nations — nothing if not a talking shop — has been debating that question this week in the General Assembly. It goes to the heart of what the U.N. is all about.
 
At issue is a declaration issued four years ago by a summit of more than 150 world leaders asserting the “responsibility to protect” — R2P in U.N. jargon — populations threatened with genocide or other mass atrocities. It was a somewhat belated response to widespread criticism of the United Nations for failing to stop massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s.
    
The carefully crafted declaration said the responsibility began with the government of the country concerned. If that failed, it foresaw a sliding scale of international action, ranging from advice through mediation to — in a last resort — intervention by force. And such a use of force could only be authorized by the Security Council, meaning the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China would all have to agree.
 
Cautious as it was, the summit document was seen by many advocacy groups as a step on the road to fulfilling their dream that if a government was committing atrocities against its people, the United Nations would march in and stop it.
 
In the real world, U.N. officials say, that is not going to happen, at least under the peacekeeping rules that have applied in recent decades. These do not authorize U.N. forces to go to war against the national army of a sovereign state — a move that would amount to invasion. Witness the six-year-old conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur — branded by some as genocide — where a U.N./African Union peacekeeping force is only now being slowly deployed with the consent of the Khartoum government. The only time that R2P has been invoked in practice — and even then retrospectively — was in former U.N. secretary-General Kofi Annan’s mission to mediate in post-election violence in Kenya last year, U.N. officials say.
 
This week’s debate was to take stock of R2P and discuss how to take it forward, although no immediate action is expected. It came against the background of a determined attempt by radicals led by General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto, a former Nicaraguan Sandinista government minister, to kick the issue into the long grass.

For D’Escoto and those who agree with him, R2P is code for an attempt by big Western powers to impose their will on the weak. In a contentious “concept note” issued to all U.N. members he declared that “colonialism and interventionism used ‘responsibility to protect’ arguments.” One member of a panel of experts D’Escoto convened to launch the debate, U.S. academic Noam Chomsky, said R2P-type arguments had been used to justify Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria and Nazi Germany’s pre-World War Two move into Czechoslovakia.
 
While some radical states, such as Venezuela, echoed D’Escoto’s line in the assembly debate, human rights groups expressed relief that most cautiously supported a strictly defined interpretation of R2P and backed proposals by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for developing it. Ban has proposed periodic reviews of how countries have implemented R2P and regular reports by himself on the issue. “To those that argued this week that the U.N. was not ready to make a reality of the commitment to end mass atrocities, the majority of the General Assembly gave its answer: you are wrong,” said Monica  Serrano of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Despite that, there have been clear signs of concern among developing countries that unless tightly controlled, R2P could be used in support of future Iraq-style invasions of countries that have angered the big powers.
 
What’s your view?

By Barani Krishnan

A decade ago, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was on trial for sodomy and corruption in a trial that exposed the seamy side of Malaysian justice and the anxieties of a young country grappling with a crushing financial crisis and civil unrest.

Anwar is Malaysia’s best known political figure, courted in the U.S. and Europe and probably the only man who can topple the government that has led this Southeast Asian country for the past 51 years.

Photo: Anwar Ibrahim, with a bruised eye, at court on Sept 30, 1998 during his his first trial. REUTERS/David Loh

Now the leader of the opposition, will go on trial next week again charged with sodomising a 23-year old male aide. The trial once again looks likely to provide gory evidence and bringing some unwanted attention from the world’s media on this Southeast Asian country of 27 million people. It could also embarrass the government and draw international criticism.

Anwar vowed in a recent interview to fight what he says are trumped up charges.

The 14 months I spent covering the 1998 trials saw Anwar accused of sodomy with three men and having sex with a woman over a period of years. This case is simpler, there is just one accuser. All homosexual acts are illegal in this mainly Muslim country and sex outside marriage is illegal for Muslims.

The first trial was gruelling. Lines began as early as four in the morning as people tried to get into the court that could seat less than 200. Most of the spectators were ordinary people, but there was a sprinkling of dignitaries and businessmen who had known Anwar when he was in office.

There was a separate media queue and again a fight to get in line as dozens of reporters from local and international outlets jockeyed for space. Ringing the court were hundreds of riot police, backed by watercannon, waiting for trouble in a country where there were daily protests at the time, often involving tens of thousands of people.

Once inside the courtroom, things were equally unpredictable. Judge Augustine Paul, plucked from obscurity to oversee Malaysia’s most important criminal trial, won national fame for his oft-repeated response of “not relevant” to evidence introduced by the defence team.

The evidence itself was often contradictory and often bizarre. Ummi Hafilda Ali, a star witness for the prosecution called Anwar a “dog” and prayed that he would contract AIDS. At one stage the prosecution paraded a mattress in and out of the courtroom, saying that semen stains showed Anwar had had sex with a man on it.

One day outside the court, a witch doctor cast a spell, for no apparent reason.

Anwar showed up sporting a black eye that he said had been inflicted on him in prison by the country’s police chief. This time round he says that he was forced to strip and his sexual organs measured in a hospital.

The evidence to be presented by the prosecution this time looks likely to be just as sensational. The malaysianmirror web portal, backed by one of the government parties, said there will be 30 witnesses, a carpet and a video recording, as well as a DNA evidence brought into court.

Anwar’s team, citing two medical reports, says there is no evidence that Saiful Bukhari Azlan was sodomised. Saiful meanwhile has sworn on the Koran that he was and wasn’t best pleased when the charge against Anwar was changed to consensual sex.

One key actor in the whole drama is missing this time round. Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who critics say used the 1998 trial to drive Anwar from office and to humiliate him, is no longer in power. That removes some of the sting.

Even so, incumbent premier Najib Razak attracts plenty of ire from the opposition. He has been forced to deny allegations from the opposition and opposition-supporting websites that he was involved in the lurid murder of a Mongolian model.

The country remains tense in the wake of the 2008 general election in which the government lost its customary two-thirds majority.

Can Anwar survive another trial? Without him, can the opposition prosper and have a real chance of winning at the ballot box  in elections due to be held by 2013. Can Najib survive as prime minister if Anwar remains free and can he implement economic reforms?

The United Nations has joined Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government in appealing for more than $700 million in humanitarian aid for the ruined country.

But while Western countries may show willing when it comes to emergency aid, they are still reluctant to give money to the government between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, his old rival.

First, they say, there must be broader political reforms and a clearer demonstration of respect for human rights.

The Western countries have long been at odds with Mugabe, accusing him of ruining Zimbabwe after the seizure of white-owned farms, of widespread human rights abuses and of making a mockery of elections last year that were widely condemned outside Zimbabwe.

But if those countries don’t come up with the finance that the government needs, some believe there is a danger it could undermine prospects for change rather than strengthening them.

"My advice is for the international community to engage Zimbabwe as the opposite of this will only benefit hardliners," Tsvangirai told a visiting French minister last week.

The unity government has said it won more than $1 billion in promised credit lines from African banks for private firms, but says it needs more than $8 billion for reconstruction.

Should Western countries aid the government now, or is it too soon?

You can have your say on the survey below. Your comments are welcome too.

Although the U.N.’s racism conference in Geneva has been dominated by Middle East politics, Palestinian rights groups say Palestinians have effectively been silenced.On the one hand tough rules by the conference organisers prevented Palestinian NGOs from holding “side events”, they say. On the other hand Monday’s controversial speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, slamming Israel as a “totally racist government” founded “on the pretext of Jewish suffering”, has distracted attention from the issues that actually affect Palestinians.

  “One thing that we have noticed in this conference is that there has been a concerted effort to silence the voices of the Palestinian presence and raising the Palestinian issue,” said Wisam Ahmad of Al-Haq, a Ramallah-based advocacy group.

 Ahmad says that Ahmadinejad’s speech became the symbol of the conference, as intended by “those that wanted this conference to fail”.

 “We as Palestinians want to be heard and it is unfortunate that the press attributes the statements of the president of Iran to all of the Palestinian people,” he said.

Ingrid Jaradat, director of the Badil Resource Center in Bethlehem, agrees.

 “We all knew he was going to come, we all knew that the European governments were going to wait until they just hear the key word and then they will all stand up and leave the hall and then the press comes in, they all would write about what he said or did not say and everybody would forget what is really written in the documents and what the conference is really about,” she said.

  “From my point of view I do not think that this was helpful for the Palestinian people in general and not for our organisation.”

 Diplomatic manoeuvering in the run-up to the conference, known as Durban II, resulted in references to the Palestinian question being dropped from the draft declaration, in an effort to get all U.N. members to take part.

In the event the United States, Israel and half a dozen other countries decided to stay away. European states walked out of Ahmadinejad’s speech but most came back for the rest of the conference, which agreed a final declaration on Tuesday.

 That document “reaffirms” the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) agreed in 2001, which does refer to Israel and the Palestine territories.

 It was that reaffirmation that prompted the United States to stay away this time. The U.S. and Israel walked out of the 2001 meeting following attempts, subsequently dropped, to equate Zionism with racism in the final document.

The 2001 meeting was marred by anti-Semitic demonstrations and activities by some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that led Jewish groups to warn that Durban II – the review meeting in Geneva – could be another “hatefest”.

 This time conference organisers put strict limits on what NGOs could organise on the sidelines of the meeting. Such side events had to deal with “thematic” questions such as the treatment of immigrants, not individual countries.

As a result Palestinian rights groups found their requests to hold events dealing with Palestine issues were rejected.

 (A pro-Israel group did manage to hold an event at the U.N. during the conference, apparently by circumventing the conference organisers and booking a room directly through the U.N. offices.)

Critics of the U.N. human rights process say it spends a disproportionate amount of time on the Israel/Palestine issue.

 For example, since its creation three years ago, the U.N. Human Rights Council has devoted five of its 10 special sessions to Israel and its alleged human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon. (One each examined the financial crisis, Congo, the food crisis, Myanmar and Darfur.)

 “The real victims of the hijacking of the human rights agenda to focus on Israel are not Israel. Israel is a strong country. It can defend itself, it has articulate spokespeople to defend it,” said civil rights activist and Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz.

 “While the people of Rwanda were being murdered the U.N. was debating Israel. While the people of Darfur were being murdered the U.N. was debating Israel. While the people of Cambodia were being murdered the U.N. was debating Israel,” he said.

And Palestinians acknowledge that they have little to show for all the diplomatic focus on their problems. Even though the 2001 document refers to the plight of the Palestinians under occupation, little has changed.

 “So far the Durban declaration and programme of action has not really succeeded to bring about any major change or improvement in the situation of the Palestinian people but in fact our situation has very much deteriorated since 2001,” said Jaradat.

A United Nations conference on racism is being boycotted by the United States and many of its allies.

They fear the meeting in Geneva will single out Israel for criticism. A previous racism conference in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, was marred by anti-Semitic street protests and attempts to pass a resolution equating Zionism with racism, prompting the United States and Israel to walk out.

The final declaration of that conference omitted that language and was hailed by Israel’s foreign ministry as a triumph.

Canada and Israel had long made it clear that they would not attend the follow-up conference in Geneva, known as Durban II.

Now, despite President Barack Obama’s policy of re-engaging with the rest of the world, the United States has decided to stay away too. So have Australia and Germany among others. Britain and France and current EU-president the Czech Republic are represented only by their ambassadors.

                                   The only head of state to attend is Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad,

who has called for Israel to be wiped from the map and cast doubt on the Nazi Holocaust, which is also commemorated by Jewish communities on Monday.

He used similar language again on Monday, denouncing Israel as a racist regime oppressing the Palestinians and founded “on the pretext of Jewish sufferings”, and accusing “Zionism” of penetrating mass media and financial systems in other countries to impose its domination worldwide.

Several advocacy organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have said the United States and other Western countries should take part, arguing that their boycott constituted a blow against efforts to promote human rights.

Even in Israel, some people say that a boycott leaves the floor open to critics of the country.

Still, those who object to the conference can draw some paradoxical comfort from Ahmadinejad’s words. According to one conspiracy theory making the round of the Palais des Nations – the U.N.’s European headquarters where it is hosting the conference – the boycott, by allowing the spotlight to fall on Ahmadinejad, simply proves the point of the opponents: that the U.N.’s international diplomacy is flawed and its efforts to discuss human rights always end up in an attack on Israel.

So President Medevedev would like to create a “Speakers’ Corner” in Central Moscow for Russians to vent their political passions.

“It looks cool,” Medvedev told a group of human rights activists. “I need to speak with the Russian authorities and build our very own Hyde Park.”
Was this just a rhetorical flourish to impress his guests, a signal that he would loosen the reins that his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, has pulled so tight? Free speech, say the rights activists, is not something Russian authorities have prized, whether on the streets or in the media. Would it, could it, work in Moscow? Where ever would you put it in that crowded, bustling city? Who would go there? What would they do there?
Singaporeans, not know for a culture of dissent and protest, have led the way, setting up their own speakers’ corner to protest over economic hardship. Hundreds meet there every Saturday to demand government help. No trouble reported yet.

The London speakers’ corner is held up by some as a symbol of British democracy, a place where anyone can stand on a box and say (more or less) whatever he wants without fear. Yes, in their day, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx haunted the place, touting ideas that would have had them dragged away by police in their own countries. Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, wrote in her memoirs that the Bolshevik leaader was most impressed watching speakers “harangue the passing crowds on diverse themes”. All jolly stuff and not something he himself encouraged when he set up the dictatorship of the proletariat back at home.

These days though, for the most part, London’s speakers’ corner is a gathering place for quirky exhibitionists and comedians, political oddballs of left and right and religious eccentrics of all ilks warning sinful tourists of hell and damnation. The occasional thoughtful soul will read through Shakespeare’s sonnets or expound the virtues of a forgotten philosopher. Heckling seems to be a central part of the fun. A policeman may be at hand in case things turn nasty, but they rarely do.

Possibly, the spot in the north-east corner of Hyde Park was chosen for its closeness to Tyburn gallows where once the condemned would make their last declarations. The Moscow equivalent to Tyburn, I suppose, would be Red Square, where villains were put to death by the axe – though, in the Russian tradition, without those last words. Perhaps, then, Moscow’s Speakers’ Corner might fit nicely nearby at Alexandrov Gardens, at the Kremlin Walls. Arguably, though, a bit too close to
Medvedev’s seat of power. My proposal would be a few hundred metres up Tver Avenue, on Pushkin Square where the Soviet Union once maintained its own bizarre and macabre form of speakers’ corner. Perhaps I should call it the hat-takers-offers corner.

Every Human Rights Day, a keen crowd of journalists and plain-clothes KGB officers would gather in the winter cold around the perimeter of the square named after the great liberal poet Alexander Pushkin. As the hour of eleven approached, a tense hush would descend. A single figure would eventually appear, walk to the centre of the square, stand for a moment, and then take his hat (usually a rabbit-skin ‘shapka’) off; a symbolic protest against the suppression of human rights in the communist state.

In an instant, the KGB officers would swoop down upon him, drag him across the square, bundle him into a van and speed him off to the Lubyanka prison. A few minutes would pass and a second dissident would arrive, take off his hat and stand to attention before being likewise borne away by the forces of order. And so it went on.

Pity though the ‘innocent’ citizen who strayed unwittingly onto the square on that December day, carrying perhaps a magazine or a string bag of potatoes, and found himself suddenly the focus of this hawkeyed gathering. He would break his step and look around, of course, in wonder at his sudden and unexplained celebrity. Me?
That was more enough. Hat or no hat, he followed the rest, bundled into the van and away. It happened, sadly.

Finally, I ask myself who would pitch up at Moscow’s speakers’ corner and in what frame of mind? Memories of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the coups, the civil wars, the anger and the hardship, are still fresh. Economic crisis raises fears of another plunge into uncertainty and the eternal search continues. Kto Vinovat? Who is to blame?

What makes London’s Speakers’ Corner possible, amid all the mockery and sometimes quite pernicious views, is that most people just don’t take it seriously. They laugh, make fun. There may be anger but it knows its bounds. People throw up their hands and walk away, triumphant or humiliated before their peers.

How would Speakers’ Corner take root in Russian soil? Would liberal literati feast on Pushkin and Gogol, while the preachers invoke the fires of hell? Would it become a platform for Muscovites nursing private grievances against uncaring state institutions, the police, big business, the President? Could a Chechen malcontent plant his flag alongside angry nationalists and red-banner waving Stalinists?
Are Russians ready yet to laugh at profanity?

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced on Tuesday to 25 years in prison for ordering two massacres in the 1990s when Peru was at war with leftist guerrillas, and the ruling could haunt the current president, Alan Garcia.

In his first term in the 1980s, Garcia, frustrated that the brutal Shining Path insurgency had taken over El Fronton prison, told the navy to attack it. The prison, which sits on an island just off the coast of Lima, was bombed by airplanes before soldiers went in on the ground to retake control. Many unarmed prisoners were summarily executed. More than 200 were killed at El Fronton and two other prisons where rebellions were repressed in 1986.

Rights groups say the Fujimori verdict could increase pressure to put Garcia, who leaves office in 2011, on trial. Luis Giampietri, who is now vice president, was in charge of the navy at the time of the attack.

Picture Credit: Reuters/Mariana Bazo. Peruvian President Alan Garcia speaks to media, Nov. 27, 2008.