BACK HOME IN NEW YORK CITY, HER friends and relatives know Lori Berenson as a compassionate idealist, an innocent waylaid by her concern for the poor and oppressed of Latin America. Rhoda Berenson, a community-college physics teacher, says the very notion of her 26-year-old daughter's being involved in violence "is absolutely ridiculous." A friend since junior high school, Daniel Radosh, finds it "hard to reconcile what they are saying about her with the gentle person I know."
Authorities in Peru take a far harsher view of Lori Berenson. They regard her as a dangerous radical who became closely involved with Marxist...