Official targets judges who sided with Berenson

LIMA, Peru - Peru's antiterrorism attorney said Sunday that he would seek misconduct charges against the three judges who granted paroled U.S. activist Lori Berenson permission to leave the country for the first time since her 1995 arrest.

Julio Galindo said he would ask prosecutors on Monday to charge the judges with violating antiterrorism laws by clearing Berenson to travel to New York City with her son to spend the holidays with her family. Despite the court's approval, Berenson, 42, was prevented from boarding a flight on Friday.

Her lawyer, Anibal Apari, told the Associated Press that Berenson presented the court's authorization, which stipulates she must return by Jan. 11, to migration officials but they demanded an additional document that she didn't have because it doesn't exist.

Apari said he would try to resolve matters with Interior Ministry officials so Berenson and son Salvador, 2, can travel. Apari is the child's father; he and Berenson met in prison and are amicably separated.

Neither the Interior Ministry nor any senior government official gave an explanation for why Berenson was barred from leaving the country.

Galindo had fought to reimprison Berenson after her May 2010 parole, arguing that she did not qualify for early release from the 20-year sentence for aiding the leftist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement that ends in 2015. While failing in that goal, he did get Berenson and Salvador returned to prison for 21/2 months before a court ordered her freed.

On Friday, Galindo filed a motion seeking to nullify the previous day's decision by the judges authorizing Berenson's trip and declaring she did not represent a flight risk.

He said that Peruvian law bars parolees convicted of terrorism-related offenses from traveling abroad, though criminal-law expert Luis Lamas said the judicial authorization that Berenson obtained granted her an exemption from that law.