US woman Lori Berenson leaving Peru after 20-year sentence for aiding rebels

Lori Berenson, a New Yorker once jailed in Peru for helping Marxist insurgents, is returning to the United States with her six-year-old son after finishing a 20-year sentence, her lawyer said.

Berenson, 46, was making preparations to leave Peru “in coming hours,” Anibal Apari, her attorney and the father of her son, said on Tuesday. He declined to be more specific.

However, a Peruvian immigration official said she would leave the country on Wednesday.

“She will go through immigration normally but she is departing as someone being expelled,” the immigration official said.

Apari and Berenson met in prison in 1997. He was also an inmate at the time.

Berenson was on parole for the past five years after spending 15 years in prison.