By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

              LIMA, Peru (AP) -- The retrial of New York native Lori Berenson opened
              Tuesday, this time in a civilian court, after a five-year campaign against her
              conviction on terrorism charges by a secret military court.

              Berenson sat behind bars in a concrete cell facing a panel of three judges, listening
              intently as officials read the charges -- including ``terrorist collaboration'' for her
              alleged role in a thwarted guerrilla plot to seize Peru's Congress.

              Five years ago, hooded military judges convicted Berenson, a leftist activist, for
              treason in a secret trial that denied her any semblance of a defense and sentenced
              her to life.

              The government hopes the retrial -- this time in public -- will demonstrate judicial
              fairness after the fall of ex-President Alberto Fujimori, whose administration
              exercised tight control over the courts.

              The prosecution is seeking the minimum 20-year sentence.

              The charges, read in a courtroom in the San Juan de Lurigancho men's prison
              outside the capital Lima, alleged that Berenson, now 31, arrived to Peru in late 1994
              as part of an international radical network to aid the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
              Movement.

              She was accused of renting a house used by the rebels as a hide-out and secret
              training center and posing as a journalist with the wife of a top guerrilla leader to gain
              entrance into Congress to plan a takeover.

              Her parents, Mark and Rhoda Berenson, sat in the front row, accompanied by their
              legal adviser, New York attorney Tom Nooter, and observers from Georgetown
              University and the Argentina office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

              Berenson, wearing a white blouse and long dark skirt, showed no emotion as she
              sat with two anti-terrorism police at either side.

              ``If she is behind those bars, already it makes her look guilty before we start,''
              Nooter said. ``She's like a caged animal behind bars before they've even presented
              any evidence against her. That is shocking.''

              Rhoda Berenson clutched a cassette recorder, saying she would tape the
              proceedings for translation later.

              Berenson has denied she knew her house mates in 1995 were members of the rebel
              group, known by its Spanish acronym, MRTA, or that they planned to try to take
              over Congress to exchange hostages for jailed rebels.

              The prosecution brought up Berenson's public pre-sentence declaration in January
              1996 in which she angrily shouted support for Peru's poor and declared, ``There are
              no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement.''

              After years of pressure from the United States, Peru's top military court overturned
              the conviction in August, paving the way for a new civilian trial on the lesser
              collaboration charge.

              Berenson's lawyer, Jose Luis Sandoval, has said his client was duped by the Tupac
              Amaru guerrillas and said rebels scheduled to testify in the new trial have altered,
              recanted or disavowed alleged statements that had implicated Berenson in the first
              trial.

              Oral testimony is expected to last at least 15 days. The three-judge court could take
              more than a month to reach its verdict by majority vote. Peru does not have a jury
              system. Under Peru's legal system the prosecution may appeal, meaning whatever
              the outcome, the case will likely be decided in Peru's Supreme Court.