Dementia and suspected schizophrenia have faded his memory.
The real shock isn’t that Navarro, who has given his age as between 76 and 78, can’t remember basic facts about his imprisonment. It’s that prison and judicial officials don’t know, either.
No one in the Peruvian justice system can say whether Navarro was ever convicted. Or sentenced.
They know that he entered the prison system in 1976, as a murder suspect in the province of Arequipa. He was accused of killing his mother. At some point he was transferred to the prison in Lima, but his file remained stored in the province where he was arrested.
His records were destroyed in a prison riot fire there.
Prisons in Peru — and Latin America, in general — are known for being overcrowded places where it is not uncommon for inmates to spend weeks, months or even years awaiting a simple hearing.
Navarro never had anyone who cared enough to visit him in prison, and any luck went up in smoke when his records burned.
A couple of points of Peruvian law: If you are imprisoned for 36 months without a sentence, you are to be freed. But it’s not automatic; someone has to file the paperwork for you. Second, according to laws at the time of his alleged crime, the maximum sentence a judge could give was 35 years.
In other words, even if Navarro had been convicted to the maximum sentence, he should have been released nearly two years ago.
It wasn’t until a radio station found and aired a story about his situation this month that anyone stepped forward to help. A lawyer, Roberto Miranda, announced on television that he would file a writ of habeas corpus on Navarro’s behalf, to be followed by a lawsuit.
Navarro’s new home is in a residence that provides shelter for the elderly who have been abandoned. He doesn’t have good memories from the notorious prison. The first thing he did upon being released was to ask to see the ocean.(CNN)