International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Gustavo Gorriti, Peru, was Peru's leading investigative journalist before having to leave the country, largely because of his reporting.

Gustavo Gorriti, Peru

During the April 5, 1992, coup, he was arrested by Peruvian intelligence squads and “disappeared” for two days until international protests forced President Alberto Fujimori first to acknowledge his detention and then to release him. Gorriti had earlier investigated, among other things, the drug ties of the man who became Fujimori’s de facto intelligence chief. After several months of mounting threats and harassment, Gorriti left Peru for the United States, where he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the North-South Center. In 1996, he settled in Panama and went to work for La Prensa. Gorriti’s investigative reporting there, however, had a similar effect, and the government attempted unsuccessfully to deport him. After Fujimori lost power, Gorriti returned to Peru in 2001. Gorriti was a Nieman fellow in 1986. He received the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award in 1998.