[JURIST] US District Judge Adalberto Jordan of the Southern District of Florida [official website] Tuesday ordered former Peruvian military official Maj. Telmo Ricardo Hurtado to pay $37 million in damages to two survivors [CJA case materials] of the 1985 Accomarca massacre [AP file report] and the estates of their slain family members after previously ruling that Hurtado had committed torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity [complaint, PDF]. Sixty-nine civilians died during the incident when Peruvian state forces raided a village in search of Shining Path [FAS backgrounder] guerrillas. A hearing to consider his deportation to Peru is scheduled for March 26. AP has more.

Hurtado was arrested [JURIST report] in April 2007 for violating US immigration laws, along with former Peruvian military official Juan Manuel Rivera-Rondon and former Argentinean military officer Ernesto Guillermo Barreiro [Desaparecidos profile]. All three are suspected of war atrocities in their home countries. The District Court previously sentenced [DOJ press release] Hurtado to six months in prison in July 2007 on one count of visa fraud and one count of making a false statement to a federal agency.