In order to discredit the Prosecutor’s hypothesis, Daniel Urresti Elera’s defense attorney, Alexander Leiva Calderón, insisted for the second time that Hugo Bustíos Saavedra was not a CARETAS journalist.
At the hearing last Friday 26 of FebruaryLeiva Calderón pointed out for the first time that Bustíos was not part of the CARETAS work team. On that occasion, he tried to question, before the judges of the Third Superior Criminal Chamber Specialized in Organized Crime, the work that Hugo Bustíos performed as a correspondent for the magazine and announced that he would present all the 1987 and 1988 editions of CARETAS as evidence.
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These claims were denied by Zuliana Laínez, general secretary of the National Association of Journalists of Peru (ANP), underlining that Bustíos was not only a CARETAS correspondent, but also president of the National Association of Journalists – Huanta Branch.
At the second hearing, held on Tuesday, March 9, Leiva Calderón indicated to the Chamber that “these copies of Caretas magazine are forceful, pertinent and useful because they denote, according to what I have argued, that the Prosecutor’s Office is lying in its accusatory request when it first states that Hugo Bustíos was a journalist; because he was not a journalist, he was a correspondent photographer and second when he stated that he was the journalist from Huanta who denounced the excesses of the Armed Forces against the population and for that reason he was killed ”.
For his part, Daniel Urresti, in an interview in RPP the Saturday, February 27, highlighted the work of his lawyer and criticized the position of the Prosecutor’s Office, which in his speech indicates that Hugo Bustíos “was a well-known journalist for the magazine Caretas, a writer of regular articles and that in his regular articles he exposed acts of the Armed Forces that went against human rights and that for that reason they assassinated him ”.
In that same RPP interview, Urresti asserted that to verify this information, his lawyer dived into the archives of the National Library of Peru on the hunt for all editions of CARETAS magazine between 1986 and 1988.
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“And we were surprised that Mr. Bustíos appears in only three articles, in two as a photographer and the third as a co-author,” he remarked.
Not satisfied with what was said, Urresti related that his new lawyer asked him “if indeed he (Bustíos) wrote for Caretas and I told him that the truth is that I have not verified that what the Prosecutor’s Office says… Ah, he told me (Leiva Calderón) You have to verify that first and when all the numbers of Caretas from 1986 to 1988 were collected from the National Library … ».
In this regard, we must not forget that Vanessa Alfaro resigned from the defense of Urresti in the past Tuesday, February 2. As an argument for his decision, Alfaro stated the following:
“My reputational interest as a lawyer and San Marcos is above all.”
Given this, Urresti asked the Chamber for a few days to find another lawyer. That is, he looked for his new lawyer (Leiva) last February.
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For this reason, it is incomprehensible that Leiva Calderón made use of the BNP after Alfaro’s resignation, since this state entity only served the public until the Friday, January 29 due to the quarantine ordered by the Government, which began on Sunday January 31 and covered all the February month.
Lie in sight? (Check lines back (see the dates and month of February highlighted) Urresti’s statements in RPP about the performance of his lawyer in BNP.)
How was Leiva able to investigate at BNP in February, as Urresti emphasizes, if it did not attend the public in that month, nor did it receive any special request for research on this topic (copies of CARETAS from 1986 to 1988) in digitization of materials?
During his participation in the hearing on Tuesday the 9th, Leiva reviewed all the editions of CARETAS from 1987 and 1988. In his recount, Leiva made an inexcusable omission. If the intention was to prove the low participation / appearance of Bustíos in CARETAS, the task should have been well done.
Namely, when Leiva reaches the month of November 1987, he points out that Bustíos does not appear in any edition of that month, when the truth is that Bustíos did participate in CARETAS 979 of November 2, in a three-page report entitled “Huanta. Death corner ». (See next image.)
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It should be noted that 1987 was a special year for Hugo Bustíos, because a photograph of him was awarded by CARETAS as the best of that year. In this regard, the journalist’s daughter, Sharmelí Bustíos, in an Ojo Público special about her father, says that “I remember the photograph of a murdered police officer and Hugo Bustíos was warned of that attack and that photograph won an award as one of the best photographs of 1987”.
Hugo Bustíos did serve as a correspondent for CARETAS magazine between 1986 and 1988 after journalist Abilio Arroyo (quoted on more than one occasion by Urresti’s lawyer in his review of Tuesday 9) left Ayacucho due to death threats from Sendero Bright.
As confirmed in the edition of CARETAS N ° 1034, with an article entitled “Hugo’s Passion” written by Arroyo, where he details how Hugo Bustíos became part of CARETAS.
“He frequently helped those who asked him to write judicial briefs and reports of disappearances. Who better than him. It was in July 1986. Hugo succeeded me in the presidency of the National Association of Journalists, Huanta branch; in the direction of the Radio newscast “Amauta” and in the CARETAS correspondent ”.
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In another part of the text it says:
“Hugo, camera at the ready, was an exceptional witness to the violence in my land. He denounced both the Sendero massacres and the excesses of the military. “Dying in Huanta” is a reflection of it. I will not forget the photo of the transfer of a coffin in the district of Macachacra in the shadow of the molles (CARETAS 944). His latest article, “Dead without fiction” presents the heartbreaking painting of the widow of Teodisio Cárdenas Villafuerte, murdered on November 8 by Sendero.
Some of his firsts were particularly dramatic. The senderista attacks against the mayor of Huanta, Víctor Yangali, as well as the republican guard Miguel Reufo (cover of the “Images” edition of CARETA from 1987), were snapshots taken minutes after the crimes occurred ”.
Leiva Calderón emphasized the absence of the name of Bustíos in the magazine’s credits, thus trying to distort the speech of the Prosecutor’s Office.
As is known, in the journalistic environment it is very common that not all graphic records are published and this does not mean that these graphic records have no documentary value.
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As a CARETAS correspondent, Hugo Bustíos sent information, data and notes from Huanta on the terror that was being experienced in that part of the country. For security reasons, these dispatches did not necessarily have to be signed.
Bustíos did not report from a barracks, less from a senderista trench. CARETAS correspondent Hugo Bustíos was carrying out his journalistic work in the midst of a crossfire between the military and senderistas, which had the residents of Ayacucho as the main victim.
The journalistic and photographic archive of CARETAS magazine has dozens of photographs of Hugo Bustos from Ayacucho between 1986 and 1988. His photographs and information record the abuses committed by the military and the Shining Path.
