Locked Up Abroad: New Yorker Lori Berenson Returns To The Big Apple

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- After more than a decade locked up in Peru, New Yorker Lori Berenson is back at home.

CBS2'S Jay Dow was at Newark Liberty Airport for a family reunion long in the making.

Berenson did not look like a political prisoner as she walked through the airport this morning with her two and a half year old son in tow.  The American activist is back in the United States for the first time since 1995, when Peruvian authorities arrested her for aiding a rebel group.

Berenson was allowed to leave Peru in order to spend the holidays with her family in New York City.

She declined to speak to reporters, but her mother, Rhoda Berenson said that the stress of the case has taken a toll on her grandson.

"The baby has had several incidents of the press really crushing in on him," she said.

Berenson was paroled last year, after serving 15-years on an accomplice" to terrorism conviction."

She was initially kept in Peru for not having the proper paperwork. With the assistance of U.S. embassy personnel, Berenson successfully boarded a Continental Airlines flight yesterday in the Peruvian capital of Lima.

Lori Berenson has said that she has every intention of obeying an official order to return to Peru by January 11th.

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