Federal agents in Florida today took Augusto Blacker, Peru’s former minister of Foreign Affairs, into custody and are holding him at a facility south of Miami, pending extradition to Lima.
Blacker, who is held in contempt of court by Peru’s Supreme Court, was accused with other former cabinet ministers of aiding and abetting the “self-coup” led by President Alberto Fujimori on April 5, 1992. Fujimori, unable to get congressional support for his sweeping reforms, closed Congress and the Judiciary with the backing of the military and announced his Emergency Government of National Reconstruction. He later called elections for a new Congress in which his party obtained a majority.
The unconstitutional measure, nine months into Fujimori’s administration, had popular support but led to the building of the network of corruption and harassment masterminded by Fujimori’s intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, in close coordination with the President.
Blacker, an economist, joined the Fujimori government in a cabinet shuffle in November 1991, assigned to steer the Ministry of Foreign Affairs towards a more proactive participation in seeking foreign investment as part of the government’s privatization program of state companies.
Other defendants in the Supreme Court trial were Oscar de la Puente, who was premier and Housing minister; Finance minister Carlos Boloña, Agriculture minister Absalon Vásquez, Industry and Tourism minister Victor Joy Way, minister of Justice Fernando Vega, minister of Interior Juan Briones, Fisheries minister Jaime Sobero, and Defense minister Victor Malca.
