Petition & Memorandum
Cmte to Defend Adolfo Olaechea (USA)
Petition and Memorandum
To:
Don Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister & To the Honorable Members of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Spain.
Madrid, May 2004
We the undersigned request from you and the members of the honorable Council of Ministers over which you preside to review the case of Peruvian citizen and long-time resident in Britain, Adolfo Olaechea Cahuas, Secretary-General of Justice International, exercising your governmental powers in accordance with the basic principles democratic law, European Human Rights Legislation, International Treaties, Spanish Constitutional and Extradition Law, and also, the stipulations of the Treaty of Extradition between Peru and the Kingdom of Spain.
Considering That:
Adolfo Olaechea was arrested in the City of Almeria at the beginning of July 2003 and extradited to Peru in August of the same year in answer to an international warrant issued originally in 1992 by the former Peruvian dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori. In that INTERPOL warrant, Mr Olaechea was accused of innumerable crimes of terrorism by the Secret Services and faceless judges of Fujimori, headed then by the notorious Vladimiro Montesinos. This same warrant was re-issued in 2002 without alteration by the purportedly democratic government of Fujimori’s successor, Mr Alejandro Toledo.
Even after the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg expressed its opposition to this move because it deemed that Mr Olaechea’s rights were not sufficiently protected in this proceeding, the Spanish magistrate, Mr Juan del Olmo, decided to ignore the Court and went ahead with Mr Olaechea’s extradition. This opinion on the part of the Strasbourg court to the Spanish Government opposing the extradition was based on the following:
There is no evidence of any crime that Mr Olaechea could be credibly charged with
It cannot be discounted that this may be a case of political persecution
Lacking are sufficient guarantees of a fair and impartial trial in Peru
Despite this, Judge Juan del Olmo did not suspend the extradition order and Mr Olaechea was dispatched from the Madrid prison of Valdemoros to the Maximum Security Jail of Castro Castro in Lima, Peru.
In November 2003, Adolfo Olaechea was released on bail by the Peruvian judiciary due to a complete lack of evidence against him.
The Peruvian state, however, did not accept the verdict of its own courts and requested from the Audiencia Nacional (High Court) of Madrid an “extension” of Mr Olaechea’s extradition to enable the Peruvian state to charge him with other purported crimes.
Olaechea’s legal defense requested from the European Court for Human Rights at Strasbourg to oppose this abusive extension on the same terms as before. Justice International and the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the Rights of Adolfo Olaechea, in view of numerous International Agreements and prior rulings of the European Court’s rulings, declared that:
This extension of the charges is a violation of the “principle of extraditional specialty” protected by International Law, applicable particularly in cases of Simplified Extraditions, such as Mr Olaechea’s.
The total lack of evidence precipitating Mr Olaechea’s original extradition, which resulted in his illegal imprisonment, confirms the concerns expressed by the European Court on the absence of sufficient guarantees for a just and fair trial in Peru were well-placed.
This total lack of evidence — which resulted in Mr Olaechea’s eventual release in November 2003 — confirms the political character of his prosecution. This prosecution is based not on facts but solely on the political interests of the Peruvian State, and, particularly, those of its current government headed by Alejandro Toledo. This prosecution is nothing but a “reward” given by the former Spanish government to the Toledo regime whom they regarded as a mainstay in Latin America for the bankrupt “anti-terrorist” policy of Messrs. George Bush, Jose Maria Aznar and TonyBlair.
For these reasons, any eventual extension of charges against Mr Olaechea must be deemed highly irresposnsible. However, Judge Don Juan del Olmo, neglecting his judicial responsibilities, did not enforce the guarantees his own court had imposed on the Peruvian government, and, in objective complicity with Mr Fernando Olivera, the Peruvian ambassador, and the Aznar government, shamefully reneged on his promises to Mr Olaechea. In the original extradition hearing, Judge Del Olmo had promised “upon the honor of the Kingdom of Spain” to enforce Olaechea’s right to the specialty of the cause, a right the magistrate himself had advised the accused to claim. This is how this case passed directly into the jurisdiction of the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid.
In January 2004, solicitor Bobo Gumpert, acting for the Peruvian State, presented before the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid incomplete and “sexed up” information in an attempt to deny the fact that the new accusations against Olaechea were in fact the same as though previously presented in Britain in 1994 in an old request for extradition promptly rejected by that European country in May of that year.
Mr Olaechea’s solicitors, in denouncing these violations and manipulations, products of the collusion between the Peruvian authorities, Ambassador Olivera, and the Spanish prosecutors, requested the postponement of the hearing called by the Audiencia for February 13, 2004.
Nevertheless, the hearing ensued and the Peruvian state was forced by circumstance (the evidence presented by Mr Olaechea’s lawyers) to admit that this request for extension of charges was indeed a retrial of the same extradition proceedings that another European country (England) had already rejected. In a Note of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the Embassy of Peru in London dated May 12, 1994, Great Britain had rejected this request for extradition for the following stated reasons:
Lack of any prima facie evidence
That this was a case of political persecution against a Peruvian citizen residing in Britain; this, due solely to his many outspoken criticisms against the undemocratic regime of Fujimori, criticisms of a perfectly legal character under the laws of Britain.
That Great Britain did not recognize the Peruvian’s state’s right to apply its indiscriminate anti-terrorist legislation within British jurisdiction in cases of political persecution.
In March 2004, despite protests to the contrary by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid issued its decision to grant Peru the extension of Mr Olaechea’s extradition.
In the wake of this foul decision, the Peruvian Ambassador in Madrid, Fernando Olivera, appeared before the press to proclaim “victory”, asserting that “finally the Spanish judges are wearing the ‘team shirt’ of the war against terrorism”, the exposing the complete surrender of the Spanish justice system to the political necessities of Messrs. Aznar, Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi, and their promotion of an international partnership of persecution against democratic individuals such as Adolfo Olaechea opposed to warmongering the suspension of democratic rights under the bogus rubric of “fighting terrorism”.
For the above reasons, Justice International and the Ad-Hoc Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Adolfo Olaechea declare our complete rejection of the former Spanish government’s behavior in violating fundamental democratic laws and, particularly, its use of the Judiciary as an instrument for its war propaganda.
We further denounce the misuse of the juridical institutions under the guise of “struggling against terrorism” by official state authority, which constitutes a grave infringement upon democratic rights.
We note, also, that the Peruvian authorities themselves, as well as prominent members of Peru’s judiciary, are publicly on record admitting the lack of real substance in the charges currently pending against Mr Olaechea. The question is whether Spain, under a new democratic administration, is now prepared to countenance such blatant complicity in the further illegal detention of a person who has received profuse assurances from Kingdom of Spain that his right to a presumption of innocence and to the due process of law will be respected.
Therefore, we respectfully request that you deny this abusive request for the extension of Mr Olaechea’s extradition or, at least, to postpone granting the government of Peru any extension until the Constitutional Court in Spain, and, eventually, the Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, have reviewed this case.
[signed]
Javier Valle Riestra, G.O., former Peruvian Ambassador at Large before the UN Commission for Human Rights
Lord Nicholas Rea, member of the bicameral Human Rights Commission of the British Parliament
Comite para la defensa de los derechos de Adolfo Olaechea
Justicia Internacional, Barcelona
Arcadi Oliveres (Justicia i Pau-Barcelona)
Coordinadora Contra els Abusos de Poder (Barcelona)
Jaume Mascaro (Professor de filosofia, Univrsitate de Barcelona)
Elisenda Ardevol (Professora Estudies d’Humantitats i Filoglogia, UOC)
Justice International (Great Britain, Barcelona, USA)
Louis Godena (Justice International)
Neil Clark (Regime Change Coalition)
William Spring (Christians Against NATO Aggression, Great Britai
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