Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori Released from Prison – He Was Convicted of Crimes Against Humanity

The 85-year-old Peruvian was released on Wednesday (6/12). former president Alberto Fujimoriwho has been serving a 25-year prison sentence since 2009 for crimes against humanity.

After the pardon granted to him in 2017 came back into force, by decision of the Constitutional Court, Mr. Fujimori, who suffers from chronic health problems – heart disease, respiratory and neurological diseases – went out at 18:29 (s.s. . local time; at 01:29 a.m. Thursday 7/12 Greek time) from the Barvadigio prison, located in a police facility in the eastern part of the capital, and boarded a gray SUV, which slowly drove away amid a crowd of supporters of him, who had gone to meet him.

His daughter Keiko, a three-time failed presidential candidate—all three times, defeated in the second round—was at his side, as was his businessman son Kenhi, who had repeatedly called for their father’s release.

“Our hearts are overflowing with joy. Because this man was unjustly imprisoned,” said Nikita, a supporter of the former president, in front of the prison.

The Constitutional Court ordered yesterday Tuesday the “immediate” release of the controversial former president.

He was convicted of the deaths of 25 people

His once powerful man Peru he had been convicted at trial of the deaths of 25 people in two massacres carried out by an army death squad in what Mr Fujimori himself called a war on “terror”, far-left rebel groups (1980-2000).

The release of Mr. Fujimori, as reported by the Athens News Agency citing AFP, took place despite the opposition of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ICHR), which had ruled against his release in 2022 and yesterday again asked Lima to “abstains from the execution” of the decision of the Constitutional Court, until it has at its disposal “all the necessary data to analyze” whether and to what extent its previous decisions are “respected”.

In defiance of the ICCPR, President Dina Bolluarte and her government gave the “green light” to release her predecessor.

The Union for Human Rights (APRODEH) for its part denounced the decision, pointing out that it contradicts previous decisions of the ICC.

The grace given to him

The Constitutional Court – whose decision cannot be appealed – reinstated a presidential pardon granted by a former president to Mr Fujimori in 2017, before it was revoked by a Supreme Court decision two years later.

It had already ordered in March 2022 that Mr. Fujimori be released from prison, but a few weeks later, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ICHR), based in Costa Rica, demanded that the Peruvian state “refrain” from carrying out the decision. Lima, where president Pedro Castillo, elected with a party of the radical left, was still ruling, complied with the decision of the ICC.

Alberto Fujimori ruled Peru with an iron fist before he was forced, facing increasing pressure from the opposition, to flee in November 2000 to Japan, his family’s native country.

He announced his resignation by fax.

After being extradited to Peru from Chile in 2007, he was convicted and imprisoned two years later.

Despite a request to be granted “pardon” submitted in 2017 on his behalf for the actions of his government, Alberto Fujimori has never ceased to divide Peruvians like few politicians in the history of the Andean country of some 32 million inhabitants.

To his supporters, he who was nicknamed “El Chino” (“the Chinese”) boosted Peru’s economy with his extreme liberal policies and defeated the rebels of the Shining Path (Maoists) and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Guevaris ).

But others remember above all the corruption scandals and his authoritarian methods, which led him behind bars, after he was characterized as the moral perpetrator of at least two massacres of civilians, committed by the armed forces’ death squads in the period 1991-1992, in the context of war against the Path of Light.