ABSTRACT
On 3 January 1949, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the Peruvian founder and leader of Allianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), was granted asylum in the Embassy of Colombia in Lima.2 It would be five years, four months and three judgments of the International Court of Justice (hereinafter ‘the Court’) before he was able to leave. The Colombian Ambassador requested safe-conduct for Haya de la Torre,
but the government of Peru declined, arguing that the 1928 Havana Convention,3 to which both states were party, did not oblige it to comply. Unable to agree on a compromis, the two governments nevertheless signed the ‘Act of Lima’ on 31 August 1949, following which Colombia instituted proceedings before the Court. Basing its case on the 1911 Bolivarian Agreement on Extradition, the 1928 Havana Convention on Asylum,4 and ‘American international law’, Colombia argued that it had the right unilaterally and definitively to ‘qualify’ the nature of the offence for which diplomatic asylum had been granted; and that Peru, as the territorial state, was obliged to grant safe-conduct to the refugee.5
