before the president Dina Boluarte dismissed him, the head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINI), Colonel EP (r) Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor, preferred to present his resignation letter alleging that he was not allowed to fulfill the mission entrusted. Actually, it was another powerful motive.
yesterday morning, La República published an interview with the head of state made by the journalist of this newspaper Enrique Patriau. He asked him about what Juan Carlos Liendo had declared the day before he was appointed head of the DINI, on December 18. reading it argued that the anti-government protests were part of a “terrorist insurgency”. In addition, while Boluarte lamented the death of a dozen protesters in Ayacucho, Liendo glorified the action of his former comrades in arms.
Patriau asked Boluarte if he shared that thought.
Boluarte replied: “No way. We are going to make adjustments in the DINI”.
“Are you going to take Mr. Liendo out?” the interviewer persisted.
“We are looking at that probability,” he replied.
Resigning. Apparently, President Dina Boluarte was unaware that Colonel EP (r) Juan Carlos Liendo came from the SIN. Photo: diffusion
In an unprecedented act, on the same Tuesday morning, the head of the DINI, Juan Carlos Liendo, was interviewed by Radioprogramas del Peru to respond to what President Boluarte had said to La República. It is not usual for the head of the intelligence service to issue a public statement to contradict the head of state of his country.
Liendo was not rectified. without presenting evidence, insisted that there was indeed a “terrorist organization” that promoted social protests and He argued that his permanence in the DINI depended on a previous conversation with the president Boluarte.
terrorists in the fog
“According to the definition of terrorism, which is in the law on terrorism – Law 24651 -, the actions that have been carried out in the demonstrations show acts of terrorism,” he said.
Then he qualified: “This does not mean that all people are terrorists, that there are no legitimate demands, that there is no inefficiency and corruption of the State. Yes, all of that exists, but, ultimately, as director of intelligence, and in what is expressed in all the media of the intelligence community, there is organization, planning, objectives from clandestine organizations. What I could have intuited before as an intellectual or academic, now from an intelligence point of view it is confirmed that there is an organization”.
Liendo did not identify the alleged terrorist organization, nor did he mention its alleged leaders. and less pointed out the evidence that the anti-government demonstrations respond to a “terrorist insurgency” plan, as he points out.
As the journalist Enrique Patriau pointed out to President Boluarte –citing a column entitled “Pensamiento Liendo”, written by the author of this report and published on December 29–, a day before he appointed Liendo head of the DINI, he said in a Willax TV program: “In every place where police and law enforcement are attacked, there is a political objective and that is called a terrorist insurgency.”
In this way, while Boluarte guaranteed that the excesses of the repression would be investigated, Liendo justified them.
despite the videos and photographs showing that Army troops made indiscriminate use of their Galil rifles firing at the demonstrators, Juan Carlos Liendo applauded the action of his former Army comrades: “I have been gratefully able to appreciate a trained, disciplined Army, acting efficiently with the use of weapons. (…) There have been unfortunate casualties, but instigated by terrorism”.
Shots. Troops using Galil rifles in Huamanga. Photo: diffusion
Boluarte herself admitted in an interview with Latina that she did not know Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor, that he had been recommended to him because he was an excellent intelligence analyst, and that he seemed like a good person. Before assuming DINI, he worked as an advisor to the Defense and Intelligence Commission chaired by legislator José Cueto Aservi.
Apparently they did not tell the full story to Boluarte.
Liendo worked as secretary of the nefarious former head of the National Intelligence Service, General EP (r) Julio Salazar Monroe, sentenced to 35 years in prison for having promoted and covered up the Colina Detachment, made up of agents of the Army Intelligence Service (SIE). Although the adviser to former dictator Alberto Fujimori, Vladimiro Montesinos, was the de facto head of the SIN, Julio Salazar was a key player in the massacres in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta, perpetrated during his administration.
Reading Thought
At that time when the “dirty war” was established, Fujimori and Montesinos decided that everyone was a terrorist until they proved that they were not. That is why the prisons were filled with innocents. But according to the perverse logic of the regime, among those detained there were indeed terrorists. It was a state policy.
Juan Carlos Liendo was an advisor to the Congressional Intelligence Commission chaired by Congressman José Cueto, from Renovación Popular. Photo: composition LR
“That’s why I tell you, what the press and politicians call Grupo Colina was not a group of crazy military men acting on their own and doing what they wanted. If that had been the case, then everyone would have been immediately discharged and locked up. If they did not do it, if they opposed the investigations and in the end they passed an amnesty law, it is because they, Fujimori, Montesinos and (General Nicolás) Hermoza, made the decisions,” said the operational chief of the Colina Detachment, major EP ( r) Santiago Martin Rivas, in an interview with him by journalist Umberto Jara (An Eye for an Eye: The True Story of Grupo Colina, Planeta 2022).
Colonel EP (r) comes from that school Juan Carlos Liendo and, apparently, President Boluarte did not know. From a sadly failed intelligence school, because the collective homicides of Barrios Altos and La Cantuta did not affect Sendero Luminoso. On the other hand, the Special Intelligence Group (GEIN), of the Directorate against Terrorism of the National Police, did succeed. He not only captured the leader Abimael Guzmán Reinoso, but also a large part of the terrorist leadership, which caused his destruction.
Liendo has not changed much the perception of terrorism that he learned in the SIN and the SIE.
For Liendo, any action against the government is terrorism: “If you want to address the facts that we are seeing as a social conflict, you are in total error. Here there are no social conflicts, not even vandalism, because there is an exercise of violence, understanding violence as the use of force for evil, some exercise of violence with a very clear political agenda: change of the Constitution, resignation of President Boluarte, closure of Congress… This is repeated as a political objective in every place where a road is blocked, where stones are thrown, where the passage is obstructed”, Liendo told Willax.
protests. According to Liendo, we live in a “terrorist insurgency.” Photo: diffusion
He even warned of a terrorist outbreak: “We are about to pass the level of violence from sabotage and actions of destability to armed action.” But he did not present evidence either.
A few hours after expressing his discrepancies with President Boluarte, he released his resignation letter. For Liendo, the reason was that he was not allowed to work. He left the DINI “due to serious complications in fulfilling the functions assigned by law.”
He glorified the Army because it did not produce “many casualties”
On December 17, Juan Carlos Liendo declared to Willax TV: “Sometimes, those of us who have passed through the ranks say that it was always better before, we faced terrorism better. I have been pleasantly able to appreciate and it has been seen in the videos on the networks, to see a trained, disciplined Army, acting efficiently with the use of weapons. On other occasions there would have been more deaths defending the Ayacucho airport”.
Liendo acknowledged that there were deaths, but that it was the responsibility of terrorism, not the Army.
“There have been casualties, very unfortunate, but these are instigated by terrorism. Before, it was enough just to put up a sign that said ‘Do not stop’, ‘No stopping, order to shoot’. And with that an airport was protected because people knew that if they (did not) walk they would be shot. Are we going to get to that again?” he said.
“Here there is a political manipulation and it is that Marxism and communism cannot live without violence and death,” he said.
The data
Profile. Born on November 28, 1965, Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor graduated from the Chorrillos Military School in 1987 as a member of the Andrés Avelino Cáceres class and an Intelligence officer.
Dina Boluarte ratifies the departure of Juan Carlos Liendo from DINI
For his part, Dina Boluarte accepted the resignation of Colonel EP (r) Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor, as head of the DINI. This, after discrepancies between the two following an interview with Boluarte published in La República.
Indeed, Juan Carlos Liendo presented, by letter, his “irrevocable resignation” from office by assuring that the anti-government protests were part of a “terrorist insurgency”.
“Indeed, I have accepted the resignation of the head of the DINI. We are seriously and rigorously evaluating the person who will be in charge. In the next few hours we will have the profile of the person. DINI is an organic entity that works as a team. It does not depend only on one person,” the president asserted on TV Peru.
