Jailed former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has given up on a government pardon, according to his son, Congressman Kenji Furjimori.
“My father has given up on the idea of a pardon because he knows he is innocent and there are no clear and positive signals on the part of the government,” Congressman Fujimori said, according to daily El Comercio. “This is a hard hit for us.”
Alberto Fujimori is serving a 25-year-sentence for human rights abuses in 1991 and 1992 — the Colina death squad killings in the Barrios Altos (15 dead in a family courtyard) and La Cantuta (a university professor and nine students murdered), and the kidnapping of businessman Samuel Dyer and journalist Gustavo Gorriti during his self-coup in 1992.
In a subsequent trial, Fujimori pleaded guilty to corruption charges, but under Peruvian law sentence time is not accumulated and only the longest sentence is served.
Fujimori’s health has deteriorated considerably in the past year and there had been suggestions that he would seek a pardon from President Ollanta Humala’s government.
His daughter, former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, had said late last year that his family would seek a humanitarian pardon.
Fujimori’s son and his lawyer, Cesar Nakasaki, said last week that the recent ruling by the Supreme Court —removing the charge of crimes against humanity from the Colina Squad members’ sentences— opens the way to a new appeal for President Fujimori’s sentence on the same crimes.
The lawyer for the Colina group victims’ families, Gloria Cano, believes the Supreme Court’s decision was taken specifically as a first step towards freeing Alberto Fujimori.
