The Judiciary also ordered each of the convicted to pay a reparation of 500,000 soles in favor of the legal heirs of Mariella Barreto. | Photo: Agencia Andina

Lima, June 18 (RHC)-- Former Peruvian presidential advisor Vladimiro Montesinos was sentenced to 23 years in prison, along with the former head of the undercover military group Colina Martin Rivas, for the aggravated murder of intelligence agent Mariella Barreto in 1997.

Barreto was an Army intelligence agent who was murdered when she was 28 years old, shortly after giving birth to her second daughter.  Her dismemberment in 1997 was the product of an Army counterintelligence plan to detect those who leaked secret information to the local press.

Montesinos, 78 years old, has more than 30 convictions for different crimes and is being held in a prison next to the Pacific Ocean that he himself helped design during his time in power during Fujimori's government (1990-2000).

The Fourth Transitory Criminal Court of the National Superior Court sentenced Montesinos as perpetrator-by-means and Martin Rivas as perpetrator for the dismemberment of the former intelligence officer.

In the case of Carlos Sanchez Noriega, another of those implicated in the crime, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Jose Salinas was sentenced to eight years in prison as a secondary accomplice.