New coordinator. Superior prosecutor of the civil specialty of La Libertad, Marena Mendoza, is the new national coordinator. In addition, she must authorize the ballistics expertise.
Six weeks after the National Prosecutor, Patricia Benavides Vargas, decided to dismantle the prosecutors specializing in human rights, the highest authority of the Public Ministry has once again reorganized this subsystem.
All this in the midst of investigations into the death, by firearms, of more than 45 citizens who participated in the marches for advance elections and a new Constitution, in the southern regions of the country.
In addition to the arrival in the country of the remains of the university students the cantutamurdered by the Colina Group, who had remained “lost” in England, where they were sent in 1993 for DNA tests.
Until January 12, the Human Rights Subsystem had two national superior prosecutor’s offices and 10 supra-provincial prosecutor’s offices in Lima, Ayacucho, Pichari-Cusco, Huánuco, Apurímac, Junín and Huancavelica.
The National Prosecutor reduced this subsystem by half, deactivating the supra-provincial prosecutors of the southern Andean regions and created new prosecutors in La Libertad, Madre de Dios and Ucayali, where there were almost no cases.
new coordinator
Yesterday, Benavides once again created a Second Superior Prosecutor’s Office for Human Rights cases, for which reason took the opportunity to change the superior prosecutor coordinating the system and representative before the Permanent Multisectoral Commission for the Strengthening of the Search System for Disappeared Persons.
Since January 13, the coordination of these prosecutors was in charge of the superior prosecutor provisional Luis Valdivia Calderón, one of the few who survived the restructuring.
Valdivia Calderón had been coordinating the investigations in Andahuaylas, Ayacucho and Puno. Now, the national coordinator of the subsystem will be a prosecutor transferred from Trujillo, in the La Libertad region, a specialist in civil mattersthe superior prosecutor Marena Mendoza Sánchez.
Earlier, on February 24, the Provincial Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office created in January, in La Libertad, was transferred to Puno at the suggestion of Valdivia Calderón, since in that region they had no cases, while in Puno the cases of the deaths in the protests.
Reorganization
Marena Mendoza Sánchez was president of the Board of Superior Prosecutors of La Libertad until December 2022. According to sources from the Public Ministry, Mendoza was one of the superior prosecutors who in October 2022 promoted a statement of support for the Nation’s prosecutor .
The resolution that names her the national coordinator of the subsystem entrusts her to proceed to reorganize the subsystemwhich would include a possible redistribution of research folders.
The sources of the Prosecutor’s Office indicate that the objective of these new changes is that “The most experienced prosecutors will stay with the cases from the 90s and new prosecutors trusted by the National Prosecutor will assume and continue the investigations of the deaths in the protests with a new approach.”
Changes in expert service
Together with the new restructuring of the subsystem of prosecutors specialized in human rightson February 27, the nationwide suspension of the official expert services of the Public ministry.
In addition, now the provincial prosecutors will not be able to go directly to the Office of Experts, but all requests must be channeled to the presidents of the Boards of Superior Prosecutors and/or the National Coordinations of the specialized subsystems.
This office had been carrying out the expert reports of ballistics to standardize the type of weapons that caused the deaths during the protests. Now, these expert reports must go through the office of the national coordinator.
