revised July 18 2003
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According to the newspapers in Peru and the Yahoo! featured Europe Press, Spanish authorities arrested Adolfo Olaechea on July 4th. We do not have reliable details, but a number of sources claim that Adolfo Olaechea was in Spain on a business trip.
The ambassador from Peru asked for Adolfo Olaechea's extradition to Peru as a "terrorist" connected to the Communist Party of Peru and the civil war in Peru since 1980, an armed struggle that only started years after Adolfo Olaechea left Peru. The headline on Yahoo! reads "Peruvian terrorist Adolfo Olaechea . . " So it is these days that the Yankee-induced hysteria about "terrorists" reverberates around the world--par for the course in this whole "anti-terrorist" fad of the rulers used to cover every kind of opportunism and misdeed. For most of 40 years Adolfo Olaechea has not been in Peru. He has been a permanent resident in England for 25 years. According to an interview in El Comercio, and because he was not a member of "Sendero Luminoso," he had a document from the Embassy of Peru allowing him to travel in Peru and consequently he had no difficulty with travel to Peru for two weeks in 1990. So the question arises, why does this charge of "terrorism" come up now, if no Yankees are pulling the strings. As the El Comercio interview points out, the people heaping abuse and charges on him in the past are now in prison, in connection to the drug-dealing, bribe-giving, mass murderer V. Montesinos who was head of intelligence/security under Fujimori and now in prison. Given the recently rising discontent with the economically failed regime in Peru, the abysmal poll ratings of its leader Toledo educated at Stanford University and the global discontent with Toledo's sponsor the united $tates, MIM is not surprised that the scape-goating has reached this level, though the details of such news are always strange. While people in Peru march against unemployment and wonder why Toledo does not carry out his election promises, it's easy demagoguery to distract people by claiming that a civil war in Peru originated in London. Caretas in its story referred to Adolfo Olaechea as a "propagandist for Sendero Luminoso." While sneering at him for denouncing Peru's regime from London, Caretas called him a cultural worker who should be punished even though he is not an "historic leader" of the Sendero Luminoso. We'd suggest that Caretas writers get out a little more--maybe tour the conditions of the countryside in Peru to understand how the armed struggle arose instead of looking for easy answers such as refugees in London. If a government in Peru cannot withstand some essays and speeches in London, that government is going to fall anyway, and the sooner everyone recognizes it and abandons such a feeble government, the less bloodshed. Some of Adolfo Olaechea's last actions before being arrested were efforts to rally Tories in England against the war on Iraq. He urged that England "save our democracy," in line with much opinion in England that the majority in a country with its own oil did not really want the war and found itself dragged in by Bush and his poodle Blair. Mao said when the enemy attacks, it's a good thing and an honor. In the case of Adolfo Olaechea, he has received a strange but significant honor, to be scape-goated this way. Is it possible that the regime in Peru is so afraid of his speaking and writing that it would really take the risk of looking so desperate in public? MIM hopes to have more details of this bizarre story later. [July 18 2003: The question arises of how slowly the wheels of justice turn. How much of this is just a holdover from previous Fujimori rantings when there is now an international order for his arrest remains to be seen. The image Peru creates is one of a "banana republic," capricious and arbitrary. At one moment, Peru allows Adolfo Olaechea in for a honeymoon of two weeks says the El Comercio interview. At another moment, it orders the arrest of Fujimori/Montesinos for corruption, drug-dealing and mass murder. The next moment, we see Peru appear to act on orders that might have come from Fujimori.]
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