The Hindu : International : The lawyer and the tissue writ

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 12, 2004

International

International

The lawyer and the tissue writ

MADRID, DEC. 11. A Bolivian lawyer has won a human rights award for a 32-year-old scrap of toilet tissue — the paper on which he penned a writ seeking examination of his case while jailed under a right-wing dictatorship.

The Spanish Bar Association has honoured Reynaldo Peters for his ingenuity in using a candle to heat up a dried ballpoint pen cartridge, composing a writ of habeas corpus destined for a Bolivian judge, and sneaking it out of prison with dirty laundry that his wife took home to wash.

"I knew she would find it," Mr. Peters said, after he accepted the award from the Spanish Justice Minister, Juan Fernandez Lopez Aguilar.

A writ of habeas corpus orders that a person in custody be brought before a court and places the burden of proof on those detaining the person to justify a detention.

Mr. Peters had been jailed in 1972 by the regime of the Bolivian dictator, Hugo Banzer, over his membership in an opposition party.

Mr. Peters, who served as a Minister three times when democracy returned to Bolivia, said the writ was printed in the Bolivian press, drew the attention of the Red Cross and international human rights groups, and eventually led to his release. He has kept the toilet paper as one of his most prized souvenirs. — AP

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