We all are familiar with the whitewashing of the record regarding the Bill Ayers/Barack Obama relationship and how a Clinton lobbying for the release of Puerto Rican terrorists barely gets a notice, but now we have another Democrat legislature who seems to be cozy with bomb tossing terrorists.
I caught the headlines today about some woman named Lori Berenson who has been been paroled from prison in Peru after serving 15 years of a 20 year sentence. What could have warranted such a sentence? I went looking, and after wading through I don't know how many articles which described this woman as a political prisoner without listing any details I finally found out what she was imprisoned for.
She she assisted a terrorist organization in Peru in it's attempts to overthrow the government.
Berenson was initially accused of being a leader of the Tupac Amaru, known by the Spanish initials MRTA, which bombed banks and kidnapped and killed civilians in the 1980s and 1990s — though it was nowhere near as violent as the better-known Shining Path insurgency.
When she was arrested in November 1995 with the wife of the group's leader, prosecutors said Berenson was helping plot a takeover of Peru's Congress. The alleged plot was thwarted in a gunbattle at a rebel hideout rented in Berenson's name.
More details were discovered from reading European sources.
During her travels, she is believed to have made contact with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, a Marxist rebel group active in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s.
Tupac Amaru guerrillas became notorious for taking more than 70 people hostage in the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in 1996 and holding them for 126 days.
Ms Berenson was arrested after she gained access to the Peruvian Congress on false journalist credentials alongside the wife of MRTA leader Nestor Cerpa.
Military prosecutors accused her of gathering information for a rebel plot to kidnap members of Congress and exchange them for imprisoned rebel leaders.
In her appearance today at the parole hearing she apologized for her involvement, which sort of blows that whole meme about being a 'political prisoner' up.
So where do the Democrats come into all of this? Back in 1997 shortly after her arrest and conviction Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) went to work lobbying the Peruvian government for a new trial. Her first trial was conducted by the military. Lori did get another trial in front of a civilian court which resulted in the 20 year sentence.
Just to be fair there were many members of congress who pushed for the new trial.
Maloney has been working with the Peruvian Government in an effort to get them to grant Lori a new trial, this time before a civilian court, that will afford her due process. However, Maloney has not been able to work out an acceptable situation for Lori, so she is asking Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for her help. One hundred and seventy five Members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have signed on to a letter to Albright, asking that she join the effort to get Lori a new trial.
Lori Berenson is a radical progressive and so many of the Democrats have hitched their wagon to and embraced these extremists. It should be no mystery that they would also defend the building of an Islamic Victory Tower at the site of the 9/11 attack.
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