(IPYS/IFEX) – On 15 August 2006, the Second Public Prosecutor’s Office requested a sanction of eight years in prison against journalist Mauricio Aguirre Corvalán, for allegedly revealing national security secrets to the detriment of the state, through the television programme “Cuarto Poder” in Lima, when he was the programme’s news editor. The request of prosecutor […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – On 15 August 2006, the Second Public Prosecutor’s Office requested a sanction of eight years in prison against journalist Mauricio Aguirre Corvalán, for allegedly revealing national security secrets to the detriment of the state, through the television programme “Cuarto Poder” in Lima, when he was the programme’s news editor. The request of prosecutor Carlos Navas Rondón also includes the payment of 600 thousand nuevos soles (approx. $US 188,000) as civil reparation. The journalist must appear at Lima’s second Criminal Court for the first hearing of the oral trial on 13 September.
The charge against Aguirre stems from the broadcast in September 2003 of a video taped in 1998 by one of former president Alberto Fujimori’s children, where the then-president appears in a meeting of the National Defence Council discussing the war between Peru and Ecuador. IPYS believes that the way in which the video was recorded (not an official record, but a home video authorized by the former president), demonstrates that no state secrets were being discussed and, therefore, its broadcast did no harm to national security.
IPYS published an alert about the case in May 2005, where the journalist stated that only a few extracts of the material were broadcast in the programme he then directed, and these were taken to the programme by the press officer of Fujimori’s political group “Si cumple”, Carlos Raffo Arce, now a member of parliament, who was then being interviewed. The journalist declared that the images were used for Fujimori’s second reelection campaign video in 2000. It was, therefore, not the first time they were broadcast.
