Fujimori faces 'execution' claims

Amid growing outrage over witnesses' accounts, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has denied his troops executed Tupac Amaru rebels after storming the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima to end a 126-day hostage drama.

Reliable military sources in the Peruvian capital, however, told the Independent on Sunday that at least two guerrillas of the Tupac Amaru Liberation Movement were shot against an inside wall after surrendering during last Tuesday's assault. Several others who had been wounded, possibly including their leader, Nestor Cerpa, and two teenage female guerrillas, were finished off with shots to the head, they said.

One of the teenagers, Luz Dina Villoslada, 19, was injured by the initial bomb placed under the dining room, where eight rebels were playing a makeshift football game, and shouted "I surrender" just before she was gunned down by troops bursting out of the bomb's crater.

The other, 17-year-old Jobana Vila Plascencia, known as "Saida", put up more resistance than her male comrades and went down with her automatic rifle blazing. "While others ran, she stood her ground and blasted away," said one source. She killed one of the two army officers who died in the assault, 27-year-old Lieutenant Raul Jimenez, the first commando to burst through the roof.

Saida, who was 14 when she joined the guerrillas, was said by hostages to have been addicted to TV soap operas before the power was cut off. She was once seen at a window, laughing, smoking and waving gaily to photographers.

The execution reports are already causing a backlash against Mr Fujimori, who basked in admiration for most of last week. Intelligence sources concurred with the versions of several unnamed Japanese hostages quoted in Japanese newspapers, one of whom said he had witnessed an execution and described the military raid as "a slaughter". Another said he had seen a rebel being led off by soldiers with his hands in the air and was shocked to learn later that all the rebels were dead.

Suspicions have also been fuelled by the fact that the bodies of Cerpa and his right-hand man, Roli Rojas, were interred at night last week before their families could see them. Rojas's mother said he had been buried "like a sack of potatoes". The other 12 bodies, including those of Saida and Villoslada, are still being withheld from their families and the authorities have said no autopsies will be allowed.

Human rights groups said they would fight for the right to exhume the bodies, starting with those of the teenagers, to examine their wounds.

In weekend interviews with foreign reporters, Mr Fujimori said reports that guerrillas tried to surrender but were placed against a wall and shot were "completely false. There were no executions". He said his order had been to free the 72 hostages and "neutralise" the rebels.

In the end, one hostage, two army commandos and all 14 guerrillas died in the raid, which lasted 16 minutes but was followed 20 minutes later by the sounds of several individual gunshots. The VIP hostages had been held since the rebels stormed a cocktail party on 17 December, demanding the release of 400 jailed comrades.

"The order was to leave no one alive," said an army commando who took part in the raid and insisted on remaining anonymous. "For us, the order was, 'Take no prisoners.'"

The controversy began soon after the raid when Peru's agriculture minister, Rodolfo Munante, a freed hostage, told a TV station that when the assault began a young rebel had pointed his rifle at him and started to pull the trigger, but then ran off with his hands in the air. Mr Munante later retracted the part about seeing his hands in the air and Mr Fujimori said the same rebel later shot Colonel Juan Valer, the other army officer killed.

It emerged yesterday that a miniature walkie-talkie smuggled into the residence inside a Bible last Sunday allowed the hostages, including three senior military officers, to help organise their own dramatic rescue. Speculation as to who took in the Bible centres on International Red Cross representatives and the Canadian Ambassador, Anthony Vincent, who had acted as a mediator.

Juan Luis Cipriani, a Peruvian Archbishop who entered the building every Sunday during the siege, did not do so last week, citing a stomach ailment. Monsignor Cipriani always took in a small carrier bag, carrying a Bible and Communion accoutrements. The Archbishop broke down and wept at a news conference after the raid. Some diplomats in Lima said he was upset because an agreement to end the siege peacefully had been close to fruition. Warned of the raid, perhaps even asked to smuggle in the radio, he had refused to enter the building last Sunday, they said.

The intelligence sources said unnamed visitors had been used to get mini- microphones into the building, one of them inside a guitar. Red Cross delegates delivered several guitars, given by hostages' relatives, during the siege.

Coded messages had also been passed in letters from relatives, who were told to deliver white or light-coloured clothes to their loved ones to make them more easily distinguishable from the olive or black-clad rebels during an eventual assault.

Using the walkie-talkie, one of the most senior hostages, retired Vice- Admiral Luis Guiampetri, was told that army, navy and air force commandos were waiting in five air-conditioned, carpeted and well-lit tunnels beneath or close to the building. Two Andean miners are said to have been buried alive while digging the tunnels.