BY KEVIN G. HALL
 Herald World Staff

 LIMA, Peru -- Supporters of the U.S. terrorism suspect, Lori Berenson, charge that her new trial before a civil court in Peru is being conducted unfairly by international standards.

 A secret military court earlier found Berenson to be a terrorist leader of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and its hooded judges sent her to prison in 1996. She was granted a civil court retrial last August on lesser charges of collaborating with terrorists.

 Her case remains a major obstacle in U.S.-Peruvian relations and has drawn international scorn for Peru's legal system.

 Since March 20, Berenson has appeared several times a week before a three-judge court at the Lurigancho men's prison outside Lima. This week she began facing
 witnesses who say she was part of the Túpac Amaru rebel group, which terrorized Peru in the 1980s and early 1990s. The case is entering a phase in which the
 31-year-old former anthropology student must explain contradictions between her testimony and theirs.

 On Tuesday, Berenson heard Pacífico Castrellón, a convicted rebel terrorist, testify that she had introduced him to a man named Carlos, who was actually the Túpac
 Amaru leader Nelson Cerpa.

 "He's looking for a lighter sentence,'' Rhoda Berenson, the defendant's mother, said of Castrellón's testimony.

 Prosecutors say her daughter rented a house where a huge cache of rebel weapons was found, and that she used her press credential to scope out Lima's hall of
 congress for potential terrorism. Berenson and her family maintain that she was a free-lance journalist who was duped by Túpac Amaru leaders using false identities.

 Through their lawyer, José Luis Sandoval, the Berensons are attacking the quality of Peruvian justice. Several international human-rights groups -- and a recent State
 Department human rights report -- side with them.

 One troubling example, the Berensons say, is that the court has allowed hearsay evidence that someone -- unidentified to Berenson or her lawyer -- heard her chant
 political slogans in Peru's Chorillos prison.

 "In the United States, the judge tells the jury to forget that statement,'' Rhoda Berenson said.

 Chief Judge Marcos Izabeta said the hearsay was allowable because it showed continuous terrorist activity by Berenson.

 Equally troubling to the Berensons, the court refused to strike from evidence a secretly taped video of Berenson reportedly confessing to her first lawyer, Grimaldo
 Achahui.

 While U.S. and many other courts would consider the taping a violation of the lawyer-client relationship, the Peruvian panel said it would not rule on the tape's
 admissibility until the sentencing phase of the trial. In the meantime, the impression has been left in the courtroom that Berenson confessed to the crime.

 Izabeta has told Berenson that any false accusations against her will have ample chance to be disputed during the course of the trial.

 Coletta Youngers, a senior associate in the Washington Office on Latin America, a left-of-center human rights group, said that while Berenson's new trial is fairer, Peru's tough anti-terrorist laws do little to protect defendants' rights.

 Conviction requires "very little proof,'' Youngers said, and Berenson "is not getting what most Americans would consider a free and fair trial.''

                                    © 2001