Ousted former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, arrives for his trial on Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Photo: Guadalupe Pardo/AP.
By Clau O’Brien Moscoso – Mar 12, 2025
The trial of former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo, the victim of a 2022 lawfare-style coup, has begun. The legal process used against him is a sham covering up the human rights abuses committed against Castillo and the people of Peru.
On March 4, José Pedro Castillo Terrones, Peru’s first Indigenous rural president, went before the Supreme Court in what he, his lawyers and supporters have called a “show trial” for the supposed crime of rebellion . Since being overthrown in a 2022 coup , Castillo has spent the past two years in Penal Barbadillo (a prison) in conditions described as torture. He is said to be under pre-trial detention, itself a violation of his human rights.
Shortly after Castillo gave an announcement that he would pursue closing Congress , a primary demand of the Peruvian masses for years, Congress swiftly moved to impeach him. In a chain of procedural missteps, Congress rammed through (illegally, as his lawyers argue) the impeachment of Castillo. One day prior to this, US Ambassador to Perú Lisa Kenna met with Peruvian Defense Minister Gustavo Bobbio to turn the military against Castillo, and had met with Castillo’s Vice President Dina Boluarte. The specter of US interventionism, unsurprisingly, was behind this coup. This led to a mass uprising, predominantly but not exclusively of indigenous campesinos coming down from their mountain homes to city centers to protest their popular will being violently denied. What followed were some of the darkest hours of Peruvian history, with state violence against an unarmed population that led to the death of at least 70 civilians and over a thousand injured.
Since the coup on Dec 7, 2022, the Peruvian masses have remained mobilized in the streets against a rising crime wave (facilitated and encouraged by the state itself), for International Women’s Day, and many more rounds of protests against the coup regime and its neoliberal policies. Through this, Castillo remained locked up in Barbadillo, the same prison that housed Alberto Fujimori, until his release and later death.
Castillo’s case demonstrates a clear tactic of US/Western imperialism. Lawfare has not only been used against the Peruvian people in this instance of judicial and congressional persecution. Instead, we see a worrying trend throughout the region where it is used to maintain the dictates of the Monroe Doctrine – “America for the (North) Americans.” From Lula in Brazil to Evo Morales in Bolivi a , the courts have been used as a new battleground to pursue the same goal – overthrow any government that poses a threat to US/Western interests.
As of March 10, Castillo has announced he is on hunger strike , in protest of the “injustice committed against (him) for the charge of ‘rebellion.’”
The following is a translation of an article published in the Argentinian newspaper Pagina 12 , by his international lawyers, Eugenio R. Zaffaroni and Guido L. Croxatto.
Pedro Castillo Faces a Farce of a Trial
From the very first moment we took on the international representation of Pedro Castillo, we recommended the legal strategy that he seems to have finally opted for on March 4: a rupture trial.
Since both of us were prohibited from entering the Barbadillo[1] prison to visit our client, it became clear to us that the judicial process (like the vacancy[2]) was irregular. There was no adherence to the Constitution. It did not represent legality. Castillo was not allowed free access to his lawyers.
Just a few hours after the improperly vacated president formally appointed us, the INPE issued a statement prohibiting the entry of “foreign lawyers” into the country’s prisons from that point on. An arbitrary measure contrary to the American Convention, taken solely to harm Castillo. To deny him his basic rights: his right to defense.
Castillo does not recognize the validity of the court judging him. Jacques Vergès distinguished some time ago between two types of trials: rupture and connivance. In the first, the authority of the judges is not accepted. Why have lawyers if the sentence is written in advance?
From a criminal perspective, Castillo’s speech did not even meet the minimum requirements of a message to the nation. In terms of typicity, it does not constitute the crime of rebellion. If it were an attempt, it was not suitable for the proposed purpose, which is why it can never be a crime. But the criminal aspect is irregularly substituting a more primary aspect: the constitutional one, which is even more important, especially when dealing with a president whose immunity was never properly revoked.
Constitutional scholars from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (whom no one would accuse of being Castillistas[3]) agree in a dossier that Congress violated both its own regulations and the Peruvian Constitution by unconstitutionally impeaching Castillo. The Ombudsman’s Office issued a statement clearly outlining the steps to follow for the vacancy to be constitutional. They did not follow them. They invented another process, which was not appropriate (because they did not have enough votes to do it legally). And this second process, in turn, was misapplied. Castillo was irregularly “vacated,” with 3 fewer votes than the law requires. This shows that his vacancy is procedurally null. It was carried out in violation of the law. Violating the procedure. This is not a secondary matter. Constitutional due process matters.
Peru: Pedro Castillo Declares Hunger Strike Over Unjust Trial
After this outrage, the irregular imprisonment of an improperly vacated president follows. That is why the trial ends up being a farce: because the first thing that should have been done is to carry out a vacancy in accordance with the law. Castillo demands a fair political trial, in accordance with the law, something he has not had so far. The place for this trial is not a criminal courtroom in the Supreme Court: it is Congress. If Castillo were to accept the legitimacy of the criminal process, he would be validating a null act: the vacancy.
The corruption charges are not appropriate when the president was improperly impeached. But they have not gone anywhere either. They were excuses to keep the president deprived of his liberty. After this arbitrary detention, they have not found any evidence against him. Nothing. The prosecutor who initially pursued Castillo (inventing news that later proved to be false) was accused herself of leading a criminal organization.
Castillo, as the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said, does not even have the means to pay his lawyers. He is innocent of all the charges against him. It is amusing that some congressmen say that Castillo “cannot pay us” the two of us: we are not defending him for money, but out of conviction, because he was vacated in violation of the law. The irregular vacancy of an elected president cannot go unpunished for Peru.
(Former lawyer) Guillermo Olivera denounced that he suffered what in Peru is called “reglaje[4].” That he was followed. He had to go into exile in Madrid. Another lawyer denounced that there was always a car parked in front of his office that followed him when he left. Benji Espinoza, who was Castillo’s lawyer, just reported that his office was broken into and everything was stolen: but especially his personal computer. These attacks, intimidations, and surveillance of Castillo’s lawyers (and former lawyers) are not coincidental.
Harassing lawyers is not the way. Respecting constitutional procedures to vacate a president is. You cannot call just anything a “vacancy,” much less a process that does not meet the minimum terms that the Constitution establishes (and demands!) for the vacancy to be legal. A congressman should know this. The defense is not saying that Castillo cannot be vacated. It is only saying that if they want to do it, they must do it in accordance with the law, something that—so far—has not happened. They cannot do it any way they want, but only in the manner prescribed by the Constitution and the rules of Congress.
In the letter we delivered in Mexico, Castillo asks for “a fair political trial, in accordance with the law.” Something he has not had so far. The criminal process cannot replace the constitutional instance, which must happen first. A false vacancy cannot be covered up with another criminal procedure. When we advised Castillo on a rupture process, we had this in mind: that the criminal farce (and the number of hearings in the same week, when the maximum is two, which shows the haste to convict him) is being used to disguise the fact that the prior constitutional process was irregular. The rupture of the criminal process can serve to draw attention to this.
[1] Barbadillo: It is a prison administered by the INPE located within the Directorate of Special Operations (Diroes) of the Police, in the district of Ate, Lima.
[2] Vacancy: It is the situation by which the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo Terrones, would be deprived of continuing to exercise his functions as president. He is removed from office.
[3] Castillistas: Supporters linked to Pedro Castillo.
[4] Reglaje: Reglaje is a crime in Peru that involves monitoring or following people to facilitate the commission of other crimes. It is also known as marking. It is a crime of endangerment that threatens public tranquility.
Clau O’Brien Moscoso is an organizer and co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team. Originally from Barrios Altos, Lima, she grew up in Kearny, New Jersey. She attended college, lived, and organized in New York City for 15 years, and is now based in Lima, Perú, writing about Latin America and the Caribbean for the Black Agenda Report.
