SAN JOSÉ – The Inter-American Court of Human Rights published a resolution yesterday urging Peru not to grant 83-year-old ex-president Alberto Fujimori, serving time for rights violations, a release on humanitarian grounds.
Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000, has since 2009 been serving a 25-year sentence for two massacres committed by army death squads during his presidency.
Twenty-five people, including a child, were killed in the supposed anti-terrorist operations in 1991 and 1992.
Last month, Peru’s Constitutional Court ordered the disgraced former leader’s release, reinstating a presidential “humanitarian pardon” granted in December 2017.
It was revoked in 2018.
The IACHR resolution, dated Thursday and published yesterday, said the Constitutional Court decision failed to give adequate weight to the right to justice of Fujimori’s victims.
“The state of Peru must refrain from implementing the sentence handed down by the Constitutional Court of Peru on March 17, 2022, which reinstates the effects of the pardon for humanitarian reasons granted to Alberto Fujimori on December 24, 2017,” it said.
Lima has said it would abide by any decision of the IACHR.
Upon leaving office, Fujimori fled into exile in Japan, where his parents were from.
He was extradited back to Peru from Chile in 2007 and jailed, having been convicted in his absence.
Fujimori, who suffers ill health, is the only inmate at the small Barbadillo jail at the barracks of the special operations police in eastern Lima.
There he grows flowers, paints, and receives family visits.
His family has submitted several petitions to have him released on health grounds but those were all rejected.
His daughter Keiko Fujimori, who has lost three presidential election runoffs, said last year she would pardon her father if elected.
She was defeated in June by leftist Pedro Castillo and now faces prosecution over accusations of illegal campaign funding in her failed 2011 and 2016 presidential bids. – AFP, April 9, 2022
