CJA represents two women in lawsuits against two Peruvian Army officers responsible for the killings of their relatives during the notorious Accomarca Massacre in 1985. The women filed these cases to seek justice on behalf of all the members of the Association of the Relatives of the Victims of Violence in Accomarca who lost loved ones in the massacre. Telmo Hurtado Hurtado and Juan Rivera Rondón, who now reside in the United States, commanded the patrol units involved in a military operation that resulted in the killings of 69 innocent civilians. At the time of the Accomarca Massacre, Hurtado was a Second Lieutenant and Rivera Rondon was a Lieutenant. They were members of Lince Company, a special countersubversive intelligence unit that was mobile and could be deployed quickly to different regions. They commanded the patrol units - Lince 6 and 7 - that were involved in the massacre.

These cases mark the first of their kind filed in the United States for atrocities committed during Peru’s twenty year civil war between 1980 and 2000. The lawsuits are proceeding in federal courts in Miami, Florida and Greenbelt, Maryland.

On March 4, 2008 a federal court judge in Miami ordered Major Hurtado to pay $37 million in damages to the plaintiffs Teófila Ochoa Lizarbe and Cirila Pulido Baldeón and the estates of their family members who were killed in the Accomarca Massacre. The judgment and damages award in this case represents the first time that anyone has been held to account for atrocities committed in connection with the Accomarca Massacre.

In February 2008, a trial on damages was held to assess compensatory and punitive damages. During the trial, the judge heard testimony from our courageous clients, former Peruvian Senator Javier Diez Canseco and Eduardo Gonzalez of the International Center for Transitional Justice. A default judgment was previously entered against Major Hurtado for torture, extrajudicial killing, war crimes against humanity.

For information on CJA’s other case about the Accomarca Massacre, against Juan Rivera Rondón, click here.

Background

From 1980 to 2000, the government of Peru was engaged in a civil war against insurgent groups, including the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path in English). Throughout that time, the Peruvian Army and other government forces were responsible for widespread and systematic human rights abuses against the civilian population of Peru. During the 1980s, the Army carried out massacres, disappearances and torture in the Andean highlands, and particularly in the department of Ayacucho. The Army committed these abuses under the guise of fighting Sendero Luminoso, which was engaged in a violent campaign in Ayacucho and other Andean areas.

Ethnic and cultural differences between Army soldiers and the indigenous, Quechua-speaking residents of the Andean highlands played a significant role in the mistreatment that civilians in Andean communities endured at the hands of the Army. According to Peru’s Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, 26,259 people died or disappeared in the department of Ayacucho during the civil war.

In October 1981, the government declared a state of emergency in five of Ayacucho’s seven provinces – known as the “Emergency Zone” – and suspended constitutional protections.  In December 1982, the government deployed the Army to Ayacucho. This led to a major increase in killings and disappearances of civilians by both the Army and Sendero Luminoso, as well as the forced displacement of the civilian population. Many innocent civilians were caught between the brutality of Sendero Luminoso and the Army.

Beginning in about 1983, the Army targeted the Accomarca district of Ayacucho, claiming that Sendero Luminoso had gained a foothold in communities in the district. The Army focused, in particular, on an area in the Accomarca district known as Quebrada de Huancayoc. In September 1983, the Army raided the homes of eleven people in the town of Accomarca, the capital of the district, and killed them for being suspected Sendero Luminoso supporters.

The Accomarca Massacre

According to the complaint, in August 1985, the Army’s Chief of the Political-Military Command for the “emergency zone” that included the district of Accomarca ordered one of his officers to devise an operational plan to “capture and/or destroy terrorist elements” in an area of Accomarca known as Quebrada de Huancayoc. A meeting was convened to discuss the plan and was attended by, among others, Hurtado, Rivera Rondón, and the commander of Lince Company, Major José Daniel Williams Zapata. 

At the meeting, the plans of the operation were laid out. Two units from Lince Company would be employed. Williams Zapata chose the Lince 6 patrol unit, commanded by Rivera Rondón, and Lince 7 unit, commanded by Hurtado, to carry out the operation. The attendees were told that any villager appearing in Quebrada de Huancayoc should be considered a terrorist-communist.

On August 14, 1985, Lince 6 and Lince 7 entered Quebrada de Huancayoc. With Rivera Rondón’s troops blocking a nearby escape route, Hurtado and his soldiers went house to house forcibly removing villagers from their homes.  After soldiers raped some of the women, Hurtado’s troops forced approximately 50 people, including several pregnant women and elderly residents, into two buildings. Hurtado then ordered his troops to open fire. Hurtado also threw a grenade toward one of the buildings, causing an explosion and a fire that burned the building with the villagers inside. 

Approximately 69 unarmed civilians were killed by the Army during the operation. 

After the massacre, Hurtado and Rivera Rondón submitted written reports about the operation. In their reports, neither Hurtado nor Rivera Rondón made any mention of the interaction with civilians in Quebrada de Huancayoc or the fact that troops had killed dozens of people.

OCHOA V. HURTADO

On July 11, 2007, CJA and pro bono co-counsel Morgan Lewis and Bockius LLP filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Miami on behalf of two Peruvian women, Teófila Ochoa and Cirila Pulido, against Hurtado for his role in the Accomarca Massacre. Teófila and Cirila lived through the massacre and witnessed many of the atrocities carried out by Hurtado’s troops. They were both 12 years old at the time.

The complaint includes claims for the extrajudicial killings of the women’s relatives and for the torture they personally endured in fearing for their own lives. The complaint also includes claims for war crimes, because the killings and torture occurred in the context of the civil war, and crimes against humanity, because the massacre was part of a widespread or systematic attack by the government against the civilian population of Peru.

The plaintiffs assert that Hurtado is directly liable for these crimes, and that he is also liable under the internationally recognized doctrine of "command responsibility." This doctrine states that a military commander may be held responsible for abuses committed by subordinates if the commander knew, or should have known, that subordinates had committed, were committing, or were about to commit abuses and failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.

Hurtado came to the United States in 2002. Hurtado was charged with two criminal counts of immigration fraud in March 2007. He was accused of lying on a visa application on which he indicated that he had never been arrested or convicted of a crime even though he had been found guilty in Peruvian military courts of abuse of authority. Hurtado has now pled guilty to those charges. He was sentenced on June 29, 2007 to six months in prison.

Although Hurtado's involvement in the massacre was cited as a key reason for his arrest, the charges against him do not directly concern the killings in Accomarca or his role in human rights abuses in Peru. CJA’s case against Hurtado seeks to hold him accountable for the crimes they committed against Peru’s civilian population and to give a voice to the survivors of Accomarca.

CJA's case was filed in Miami in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Teófila and Cirila have also brought a case against Rivera Rondón in Maryland. For information on that case click here.