Various specialists question the Government for its initiative that seeks to hitmen and extortion are crimes of terrorism as announced the Minister of the Interior, Avelino Guillén.
“We are debating in the Ministry of Interior the possibility of classifying hit men and extortion as terrorism in order to aggravate penalties and sanction it as a form of terrorism ”, Guillén told the press on December 15.
Since then, the Ministry has not given more information about the initiative or responded to La República’s inquiries.
Avelino Guillén
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According to PoliceBetween January and November 2021, there were 512 homicides in Lima, of which 225, that is, 44%, were hitmen. In Callao, of 264 murders in the same period, 206, 78%, were by hitmen.
However, various specialists consider the government’s idea a mistake.
“Fujimori already tried that, creating the terrorism crime special to submit these cases to the military jurisdiction, with a law later repealed because this is not terrorism. It is something that has failed in the past ”, says the criminal lawyer Carlos Caro.
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“It is an error because terrorism was already defined by the Constitutional Court in a 2003 ruling that the difference from common crimes in which the terrorist seeks to change the constitutional order by force. Assimilating hitmen and extortion to terrorism would go against that sentence of the TC and all doctrinal and international law conceptions of terrorism ”, he adds.
The criminal lawyer Alexei Saenz, teacher of the San Marcos University, agrees that “we cannot denature common crimes in terrorism.” “Don’t distort,” he says.
Terrorism in Peru
In addition, it highlights that the crimes of hitman and extortion already have high penalties in the legislation, although there is a lack of training to take advantage of it.
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“Sicariato is the crime with the most life sentences: five. I don’t know where else it can get worse. In the reform of 2015 it was the cherry on the cake. Other assumptions were also incorporated into the crime of extortion. What went wrong? There was no training for police officers, judges or prosecutors ”, he explains.
The anthropologist Cecilia Calarachín, a crime consultant, considers “positive that the current administration puts these crimes on the agenda”, but that a comprehensive look is needed.
“The phenomenon requires a comprehensive approach, not only from the regulatory aspect or making penalties more rigorous, but also from the preventive sphere and, especially, with the strengthening of the Police in criminal investigation ”, he notes.
National Police
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It also points out the difference between terrorism and hitmen and extortion. “They are criminal phenomena with different characteristics and motivations. Beyond discussing details on the classification or hardening of penalties, It is important to integrate aspects that allow the design of strategies to reduce the formation of groups that engage in extortion or hitmen“, He says.
The data
Unsafety. According to a study by National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) presented last June, 82.3% of the urban population in Peru perceives that in the next twelve months you could be the victim of a criminal act. In Lima and Callao, 90.3%.
90% of the urban population of Lima and Callao believe that in the next 12 months they could be a victim of crime, according to an INEI study. Photo: Gianella Aguirre / URPI – LR
