Father Forced to Lynch Son By Peru Vigilantes

A mob in Peru forced a farmer to lynch his own son, a teenager accused of killing and robbing, in a brutal example of vigilante justice. Gerardo Parisuana reportedly hanged his son Gary last week after 3,000 people surrounded the family home in Patascachi, a remote village in the highland of province of Huancane near the border with Bolivia.

The victim, said to be aged 16 or 17, was lynched after reportedly confessing that he was the leader of a gang of cattle rustlers which had killed at least seven people. The mob forced the father to participate in the killing in front of the victim's mother as a warning to other families to rein in wayward youths.

Vigilante justice is common in rural parts of Latin America where the police and courts are weak, but it is rare for a family to be compelled to kill its own kin.

A coroner confirmed that hanging was the cause of death and police have begun an investigation, said the daily Los Andes.

The incident started when several youths tried to sell cows at a market. Farmers recognised the beasts as having belonged to a friend who had been killed while out in the fields. Under interrogation the youths said they were part of a gang that in recent years had killed seven farmers. They named Gary Parisuana as their leader. Apparently he had been detained by the police but released.

A crowd marched on the Parisuana household where it smashed windows, burned property and forced the teenager to confess. According to some versions he was tortured before being hanged. Another youth who was also accused of being a member of the gang was saved when community leaders intervened and handed him over to the police.

Peru's ramshackle state barely reaches up to Huancane's highlands. Many lynchings go unreported, though a mob of about 15,000 people in the town of Ilave made international headlines in 2004 when they kidnapped and lynched the mayor, Cirilo Robles, for alleged corruption.