Capture of Montesinos Ends 8-Month Manhunt

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

LIMA, Peru, June 24 -- Peru's former spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, whose disappearance in October amid corruption and murder charges set off Latin
America's largest manhunt, was captured Saturday night in Caracas after an investigation that ranged over three continents.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela announced the arrest today at a summit of Andean nations in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. Montesinos, who served as
intelligence adviser to Peru's disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori since Fujimori took office in 1990, was being held at military intelligence headquarters in
Caracas and was scheduled to return to Peru Monday morning.

U.S. officials said American involvement was critical to the capture of Montesinos, who had long been tied to the CIA and was supported by Washington during
much of his tenure as an ally in fighting drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas.

"The United States government has been providing ongoing support to the government of Peru over the course of the investigation and manhunt for Montesinos,
support which played a vital role in Montesinos' capture," a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Lima said today.

Montesinos' impending return to Peru comes as the country is engaged in a painful public accounting of Fujimori's decade in power, which began with a triumph
against guerrilla terrorism and ended with the president's resignation and Montesinos' disappearance last year.

The whereabouts of the former spy chief had been unknown since he fled Peru, reportedly on a private yacht, in October. No one is even sure what he looks like as
he reportedly may have had plastic surgery last December at a Caracas clinic.

But what Montesinos might reveal during a criminal trial could shake Peruvian politics as the country prepares to inaugurate President-elect Alejandro Toledo, an
opponent of Fujimori who was elected this month. Peruvian authorities have seized 2,400 videotapes made by Montesinos that show members of the political
opposition, the military and the media in a variety of compromising acts, and officials say he likely could disclose much more.

"He has a lot of information to tell us to help us unravel the network of corruption that existed," said Luis Solari, head of Toledo's Peru Possible party. "Independent
of this, we trust that the papers for his extradition will be arranged and that we will have the corresponding proof to support these charges."

Montesinos, 56, left Peru after one of his videos showing him bribing an opposition legislator to switch parties was stolen and sold to a political opponent for
$100,000. It eventually led to Fujimori's resignation after his tainted election to a third term in May 2000. The Peruvian government pledged a $5 million reward for
Montesinos' capture.

Since then, Montesinos, who is believed to have illegally amassed a vast fortune, has left a trail of tantalizing clues: an abandoned yacht in the Galapagos Islands;
clothing doused in his favorite cologne in a plastic surgeon's office in Caracas. But after eight months, a search involving investigators from Peru, Venezuela, the
United States, and Interpol seemed to be making little progress.

Because Montesinos is believed to know Peru's deepest secrets, his capture came as a surprise to many here who had speculated that he would either be killed or
remain at large forever. He had developed a network of bank accounts and hideaways from Buenos Aires to Morocco, and he is said to have counted among his
friends CIA agents and U.S. ambassadors, left-wing Venezuelan generals, Colombian guerrillas, Russian mafia bosses and Raul Castro, the Cuban defense minister
and brother of President Fidel Castro. Whether he relied on these contacts to help him hide could emerge during his trial.

Montesinos has been charged in Peru with organizing death squads, trading arms for drugs with Colombia's largest rebel army, and amassing an illegal fortune
estimated at $264 million. A recent congressional report said that Montesinos had turned Peru into a kind of "drug state," even as he served as the U.S. government's
principal liaison to military and intelligence agencies carrying out its anti-drug strategy.

The CIA identified him as a potentially valuable ally as early as the 1970s, according to declassified U.S. government documents, and Peruvian officials have
suggested privately for months that the agency may have been helping to protect him. Jose Ugaz, the Peruvian special prosecutor handling the case, said that
"Montesinos had a lot of allies as well as enemies. And not all of them want to see him brought into the light of a public court room."

Interior Minister Antonio Ketin Vidal, who in 1992 arrested Abimael Guzman, the leader of the violent Shining Path guerrilla group, headed a team of more than 80
commandos searching for Montesinos. Vidal, who left for Caracas today to arrange for Montesinos' return, thanked the FBI for its help, which he did not describe in
detail.

Last week, three Venezuelans were arrested in Miami on suspicion of helping Montesinos launder money. One of the suspects provided FBI agents with the location
of Montesinos' hideout. The FBI immediately relayed that information -- described as irrefutable by a U.S. official familiar with the case -- to Peruvian authorities,
who passed it on to Venezuelan authorities. The U.S. official said the evidence prompted the Chavez government to make the arrest.

For months, Venezuela had been the country with the most frequent reported sightings. In 1992, a year in which Venezuela had two coup attempts, including one led
by Chavez, Montesinos helped arrange political asylum in Peru for 93 military officers involved in trying to topple the government of President Carlos Andres Perez.
The officers granted asylum were not involved in Chavez's attempted coup.

Caracas became the focus of the search in December following media reports that Montesinos had sneaked into Venezuela for plastic surgery at a clinic in the
capital's San Bernardino neighborhood, and then slipped out without paying. Then, in April, reports surfaced that Montesinos was holed up in southern Venezuela at
the estate of one of Chavez's main financial supporters. Although a raid by Venezuelan authorities found no one, the incident revived speculation that Montesinos was
relying on his contacts to evade capture.

"Montesinos arrived on a false passport and must have had a nod from a very senior level," said a European diplomat in Caracas. "Big money talks or shouts in any
part of the world, and I would imagine that a large amount of money changed hands."

Pedro Carreno, a member of Chavez's party, responded to these suspicions in April by saying Montesinos had been snatched from Venezuela by Peruvian
intelligence agents and killed at a Peruvian military base. But Chavez dismissed those rumors today while regaling the summit gathering with a few details of
Montesinos' capture. He did not say where the arrest was made.

Several days ago, Chavez said, military intelligence officials had located Montesinos in Caracas and began to plot his capture. Chavez said that he and his interior
minister, Luis Miquilena, had arranged a code that would serve to notify the president when the operation was to begin.

"Several nights ago he called me and said, 'I am going to order you coffee,' " Chavez said, referring to the code. "So I waited and waited, wondering where was the
coffee. Were they planting the [coffee] bush? Then, last night, Miquilena called me and said, 'I have your coffee.' "

The arrest followed by two days a meeting between Chavez and Toledo here in Lima. "[Chavez] kept his promise to me," Toledo said today from the southern
Peruvian city of Arequipa, which was hit Saturday by a strong earthquake. "He told me he would do everything he could to deliver him to me. This is good news, and
it gives us hope that we will restore justice to Peru."

A congressional committee here headed by Vice President-elect David Waisman has linked 150 people to criminal enterprises connected to Montesinos. The
criminal activities included skimming money from hotels, bribing military officials, operating a drug cartel and selling as many as 50,000 assault rifles to Colombia's
largest rebel army.

The investigation has expanded to include 530 suspects -- 61 of whom have been arrested -- and has uncovered $264 million hidden in banks in the United States,
Switzerland, Grand Cayman, Mexico, Bolivia and Uruguay.

"Many people are quaking in their boots right now in Lima," said Coletta Youngers, a senior associate with the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights
group. "We've learned in the last nine months of the deep, deep corruption in Peru. Now we'll get to see what Montesinos has to say in a public trial."

Staff writer Anne Hull in Washington, correspondent Anthony Faiola in Rio de Janeiro and special correspondent Lucien Chauvin in Lima contributed to
this report.

                                               © 2001