LIMA (Reuters) ? Lori Berenson, a New Yorker who spent 15 years in Peruvian prisons for aiding Marxist insurgents, was prevented by Peru's interior ministry from making her first trip home since her 1995 arrest, her lawyer said on Saturday.
Berenson, 42, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, was paroled last year after serving 15 years of a 20-year sentence. A judge on Friday gave the U.S. citizen permission to travel abroad, enabling her to head to Lima's airport to catch a plane to the United States.
But an official told her Peru's interior ministry had not been formally notified of the judge's ruling and blocked her from flying as a parolee, Anibal Apari, her lawyer and the father of her son, told Reuters.
RPP radio also said she arrived at the airport too late to catch the flight.
"I'm going to see what measures I can take in the coming days," Apari said when asked when he would sort out the bureaucratic red tape so that Berenson could try to head home again.
The judge said she must return to Lima by January 11 in a ruling that prosecutors criticized, saying there was little way to ensure sure she would return to Peru. The two countries share an extradition treaty and are close allies.
Berenson's father, Mark, said on Friday she would go back to Peru because she did not want to break the law.
At the time of her release from prison, Peru's government resisted calls to commute the rest of her sentence so she could relocate permanently to the United States. Prosecutors also tried to block her parole and once got it suspended temporarily before she was released again.
A student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming involved in social justice issues in Latin America, Berenson was pulled off a bus in Lima 16 years ago and charged with belonging to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, an urban guerrilla group.
The MRTA was active in the 1980s and 1990s when a larger insurgency, the Maoist Shining Path, also tried to topple the state.
While behind bars, she became known as an accomplished baker, participated in talent shows of inmates, and had a child with Apari, a former member of the MRTA.
She told Reuters last year that life outside prison was "much harder than I thought."
Her neighbors in Lima shouted insults at her after her release in a country where people are still traumatized by memories of a long civil war that killed 69,000 people.
Berenson was never convicted of participating in violent acts, but was found guilty of providing support to the MRTA. She says she was imprisoned for renting a house where MRTA members stayed.
"It would be nice if people didn't see me as the face of terrorism, but I can't change that. I live with it. It's not easy, especially because I don't think that I'm a terrorist," she said at the time.
A military tribunal initially sentenced her to life in prison using counterterrorism laws. She was retried later in a civilian court and her sentence was reduced after pressure from her parents, human rights groups and the U.S. government.
(Reporting By Enrique Mandujano and Terry Wade in Lima and Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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