“I assume my penal responsibility for the crime of terrorist collaboration,’’ Lori Berenson wrote in a letter.
LIMA — Paroled New York activist Lori Berenson apologized to Peru for her “crime of collaboration with terrorism’’ in a letter obtained yesterday by the Associated Press.
Berenson, 40, had long declared herself a political prisoner, though she did acknowledge “committing errors’’ in papers submitted by her defense team that enabled her May 27 parole.
In the two-page handwritten letter to Peru’s pardons commission, dated the day of her release, Berenson asks a government panel to commute her 20-year sentence for aiding the leftist rebel Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA.
She wrote that she wants to go home to the United States to be reunited with her entire family and that both she and her 1-year-old son, Salvador, require medical treatment and possibly hospitalization. She does not elaborate, although her father, Mark, has said in the past that she suffers from a degenerative back ailment.
Under the terms of her parole, Berenson must remain in Peru until the sentence ends in November 2015 — unless President Alan García decides to commute the sentence.
“I am still analyzing and reflecting,’’ García told reporters yesterday. “People must pay for the crimes they commit.’’
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