Human Rights, Law & Justice

Fujimori Pleads Not to Return to Prison, After His Pardon is Revoked

Fujimori posts a plea on his Facebook page.

Former President Alberto Fujimori checked into a private clinic yesterday, following the decision by the Supreme Court to annull his presidential pardon and issue a warrant for his arrest.  Since then, police have been on guard at the clinic, waiting for the medical staff to authorize Fujimori’s release.

Although able to step out of an ambulance and onto a gurney without any help yesterday, Fujimori’s video and post on his Facebook page today painted a different picture.  His voice was strong, but his message was a plea.

“I would like to say to the authorities and politicians to please not use me as a political weapon because I no longer have the strength to resist. I want to ask the President of the republic and the members of the Judiciary only one thing: please don’t kill me (…) If I return to prison, my heart will not stand it, it is too weak to go through the same thing again. Don’t condemn me to death, I can’t take any more.”

Justice Hugo Nuñez on the Supreme Court ruled yesterday to annul the pardon, granted on Christmas Eve last year by then President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, on the grounds that it had been granted as a political trade-off, that there were administrative irregularities in the procedure (including the appointment of Fujimori’s own physician to the medical committee evaluating the case), and incongruencies in the medical reports that do not provide credible explanations as to Fujimori’s health deterioration.  Nuñez’ decision can be read on Scribd by clicking here.

Fujimori with his four children a day after his release in January 2018.

Transparency, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and various legal organizations have congratulated Peru’s judiciary on the ruling, while lawmakers in Keiko Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular party are protesting, and Roque Benavides, president of the private industry federation, Confiep, said “Annulling Fujimori’s pardon does not contribute to reconciliation.”

Former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski granted the pardon 10 months ago in the belief that Fujimori’s release would encourage reconciliation, a decision that was deemed a political move to appease opposition and secure support in the Congress where Keiko Fujimori’s majority was intent on ousting Kuczynski.

Rather than calming the waters, however, the pardon not only raised protests from human rights organizations and a significant number of constitutional lawyers — Fujimori was serving 25 years for human rights abuses— but caused a rift in Keiko Fujimori’s own party. Keiko was against the pardon (she wanted her father’s sentence annulled) and her party ousted brother Kenji Fujimori and two other lawmakers from the party and from Congress for their attempt to defend Kuczynski and manipulate votes in the impeachment process.  Kuczynski lost three of his own lawmakers, who resigned from the PPK party because of the Fujimori pardon, and also four of his cabinet —the ministers of Culture, Interior, Defense and Agriculture.

Since the pardon was granted Alberto Fujimori has been living in the residential La Molina district in relative anonymity.  Now, the sharp division between those for and against the pardon has come to the fore again.

Alberto Fujimori’s 25-year sentence was handed down in 2009, in a trial that was recognized internationally as impeccable, on charges that as President, he authorized the murders of 15 people in a Barrios Altos tenement courtyard, and of the torture and murder of nine students and a professor from the national teachers university at La Cantuta. The crimes were committed in 1991 and 1992, respectively, by a military death squad known as the Grupo Colina.

Following Fujimori’s pardon and release from prison, the families of the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta victims appealed in January to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, with Carlos Rivera from the Legal Defense Institute acting as their lawyer.  The Court in June gave Peru’s judicial system until Oct. 28 to resolve the case, ruling that the pardon had not met international standards.  Fujimori turned 80 on July 28 this year, but none of his health problems have been considered life-threatening.

Both Keiko and Kenji Fujimori, although separately, say they will appeal the court decision. Alberto Fujimori’s lawyers have already filed an appeal, requesting that the arrest warrant be suspended during the appeal.

“This is one of the saddest days of our life,” sais Keiko Fujimori. “This decision is injust and inhumane.”

Pending the medical decision at the Centenario clinic, Fujimori would be returned to the private apartment-like cell he occupied since his arrest in 2007, in the special police operations compound in east Lima. His imprisonment had certain communications restrictions but no restrictions on the number and frequency of visitors.

Meanwhile, Fujimori is now a defendant in the trial known as the Pativilca case, covering the murder of six men in the farming community on the coast north of Lima, committed in 1992 by the same Colina Group convicted for Barrios Altos and La Cantuta, with Fujimori’s knowledge.  It was only in 2006 that members of the Colina group admitted to their involvement in the murders, and in 2017 the court was able to begin court hearings.

 

2 Comments

  1. “Transparency, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and various legal organizations have congratulated Peru’s judiciary on the ruling”…. the ONLY “Human Rights Abuse” is the abuse of Alberto Fujimori’s “Human Right” to die in peace.

    The ‘saviour of Peru’….he who ended the war with Ecuador, stabilized the economy and currency, defeated the Senderos and MRTA…..for the PEOPLE OF PERU, not for himself. That he had working for him some ‘corrupt’ officials….is reminiscent of PPK, Garcia, Toledo, Humala and Paniagua…..and all of the recent ‘Presidents’ of Peru….so why are THEY free, and Fujimori is to receive a death sentence, when it could be argued that THEIR ‘crimes against humanity’, are, in total, worse than whatever Fujimori did to save HIS COUNTRY, extraordinary measures in extraordinary times.

    These communist ‘Human Rights’ fronts will NEVER accept their OWN responsibility for the “Human Rights Abuse” received by the thousands of DEAD at the hands of NOT Alberto Fujimori, but COMMUNISTS…..Maoist Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman and by the Marxist MRTA. They are gross hypocrites, and their panicked crowing should be IGNORED.

  2. bryan corts

    i agree these commies need to get their asses kicked again! history repeats itself. might need to send some real men in there to show whose boss ya fish heads!

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