BY KEVIN G. HALL
 Herald World Staff

 LIMA, Peru -- The U.S. ambassador to Peru suggested Thursday that Peru consider freeing New Yorker Lori Berenson on humanitarian grounds, a day after she was convicted and given a 20-year sentence for collaborating with terrorists.

 ``I would only ask the Peruvian people to understand that she has passed 5 1/2 years in prison, most of the time over 12,000 feet, and that is tough,'' U.S. Ambassador John Hamilton told reporters in Arequipa, in southern Peru. He also cited a U.S.-Peru treaty that would allow her to request transfer to a U.S. prison after she has exhausted her legal appeals. Both countries would have to agree to such a transfer.

 Berenson has served more than five years in difficult prison conditions, much of it in freezing temperatures in the Andean highlands. The Berenson case has been an
 irritant in U.S.-Peruvian relations since her arrest in November 1995.

 ``The North American people, the Congress and the government would like this to be seen in its humanitarian dimension,'' Ambassador Hamilton said, refusing to
 comment on the fairness or specifics of the trial since Berenson plans to appeal the verdict.

 In the past, the U.S. government has asked only that Berenson, 31, be given the same treatment as Peruvians under a civil, rather than military court trial. Bush
 administration officials in Washington were more reserved than Hamilton, merely asking that Berenson's appeal receive speedy consideration by Peru's supreme court.

 Berenson was convicted of treason and given a life sentence in January 1996 by hooded military judges under widely condemned anti-terrorism laws that remain in force today. Her sentence was annulled last August.

 Berenson's parents denounced Peru's courts Thursday. ``I was expecting it because I have a strong feeling that nothing has changed in Peru with respect to the justice system that's a total sham,'' Mark Berenson said from Lima, speaking to ABC's Good Morning America on Thursday.

 In Washington, State Department spokesman Phillip Reeker said Thursday the United States sympathized with Berenson's parents. But, he said, ``the court rendered its verdict after a public trial, free of the most egregious flaws in the military trial...''

 The conviction on Wednesday by the three-judge civil anti-terrorism court is controversial in Peru, where more than 30,000 civilians, soldiers and guerrillas died in two decades of conflict.

 Many Peruvians are angry at what they see as special treatment accorded Berenson, who has yet to condemn the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement that she was convicted of aiding.

 Justice Minister Diego Garcia-Sayan and Marcos Ibazeta, the chief judge of the terrorism court, insist Peru's televised, open proceedings in the Berenson trial were proof she had a fair trial.

 Speaking to morning television programs Thursday, Judge Ibazeta dismissed complaints about an unfair process. For him, Berenson could not convincingly explain away how she arrived in Peru with a Panamanian member of the rebel movement and rented a luxury home with him far beyond the needs of a researcher and unpublished freelance journalist.

 That house was later used by the guerrillas, although Berenson says in the months that she was there she never knew the people to whom she sublet. Police raided the home and found more than 3,000 sticks of dynamite.

 This report was supplemented by Herald wire services.

                                    © 2001