Lori Berenson is back in the U.S. after 16 years but she is expected to return to Peru - VIDEOS

At last, Lori Berenson is back in the United States after 16 years in Peru, where she spent 14 years incarcerated and 2 years under house arrest. 


Berenson arrived this morning to New York, for a brief visit to her parents. She is expected to return to Peru around January 11, 2012.

Update: Lori Berenson arrived this morning at Newark airport, CBS-NYC reports that her mother says they are planning to relax during her stay, and she will return to Peru next month. AP has posted this video:

This video and photos show the moment when Berenson is leaving Peru at the Lima's airport. Notice how she avoids declaring to the often hostile press of Lima.

Lori Berenson arriving to Lima's airport last night. Photos AP and Reuters.

Lori Berenson and her son Salvador Apari-Berenson leaving Lima. 

Lori Berenson left the U.S. for Peru in 1995 when she was 27 years of age, leaving behind a comfortable life as a college student in NYC, as the daughter of two MIT scholars.

Berenson had just finished working as a volunteer in El Salvador, and later said she was moved by idealistic plans of supporting what she might have thought was a popular revolution of the people of Peru. It wasn't.

Now at 42, Berenson will arrive this morning to NYC, and to a country that is extremely different from when she left. In Peru, she faced all kinds of abuses, torture, mistreatment from the Peruvian government and the media, and the rejection of most Peruvians.

It is hard not to feel some level of sympathy for Lori Berenson, even when many Peruvians keep hard feelings about her, due mostly to the misinformation about her life and about the MRTA group.

As a Peruvian who left Peru during the violent years of the internal war, I should probably be upset at Berenson's support to the Marxist guerrilla Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA). But I am not.

Berenson was an idealistic activist who thought the MRTA represented a popular revolution of the people of Peru, she traveled to Peru after supporting the guerrilla group FMLN in El Salvador, which today is a political party that won the recent presidential elections.

Actually, I have supported the freedom of Lori Berenson, and here I explain better why I do that.

Berenson's biography is very interesting, her life should be portrayed by a movie or a documentary in the future, perhaps once she finishes her current parole sentence in Peru she should write a book, as well.

For now, I believe she deserves to restart her life as a mother, and to have moments of privacy with her Peru-born son Salvador Apari, her parents and even friends.

This video produced by biased NY Times reporter Simon Romero along with Lima-based videographer Andrea Zarate, explains briefly why Lori Berenson was imprisoned in Peru:

I wish Lori Berenson and her family in the U.S. to enjoy this time of reunification.

Lori Berenson walks in Lima with her attorney and her son's father Anibal Apari, a former MRTA member who graduated from Law school after finishing his sentence. Photo AP

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