Journalist gives evidence at trial of former president

Описание: (28 Mar 2008) SHOTLIST
28 March, 2008
1. Exterior of police headquarters where trial is taking place
2. Police outside the headquarters
3. Former President Alberto Fujimori entering courtroom
4. Panel of judges arriving
5. Witness, journalist Umberto Jara, swearing in
6. Close up of Fujimori
7. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Umberto Jara, Witness:
"And he (Santiago Martin Rivas) maintained and told us that their orders came from politicians, he said they didn't act on their own ideas, they wouldn't, he said it was the president of the republic, in his role of supreme chief of the armed forces, who told them to go ahead."
8. Zoom in of Fujimori's shoes without sockets
9. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Umberto Jara, Witness:
"What he explained is that they weren't a group of murderers acting on their own, he told us it was a logistical operation: who's on the books, on the (army) manuals. This, he said, was part of an act of war and was approved by the president of the republic and the military high command and that they just executed it."
10. Fujimori leaving court
FILE - September 2003
11. Pan of Jara interviewing chief of Colina Group, Santiago Martin Rivas
12. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Santiago Martin Rivas, former chief of Colina Group:
"This thing here (showing a manual of the army), to be applied, needs a political decision, needs and authorisation of the minister of war of that time and of the president of the government and of course of the president of the republic."
13. Jara reading book he wrote about Colina group
STORYLINE
The trial against former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori continued on Friday with journalist and writer Umberto Jara appearing in the witness stand.
Jara has been the only journalist to interview Santiago Martin Rivas, the chief of the paramilitary Colina Group.
The ex-president is accused of authorising operations by the Colina Group, formed to battle subversives in Peru's war against Maoist Shining Path rebels.
The group killed 25 people in two massacres in 1991 and 1992.
Fujimori denies knowing about the death squad or ordering a dirty war against leftist rebels.
But Jara said Martin Rivas had told him the the Colina group wasn't "a group of murderers acting on their own".
"He maintained and told us that their orders came from politicians, he said they didn't act on their own ideas, they wouldn't, he said it was the president of the republic, in his role of supreme chief of the armed forces, who told them to go ahead," Jara told the court.
In the 2001 interview with Jara, Martin Rivas acknowledged the existence of a dead squad called the Colina Group which acted under the authorisation of the "minister of war of that time, and of the president of the government and of course of the president of the republic".
But when arrested in 2002, Martin Rivas denied everything and said the interviews were "just a play".
He maintained this when he appeared at Fujimori's trial last month, denying the Colina Group ever existed and that the former president had any knowledge of it.

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