Fujimori awaits abuse-of-power verdict
Peru’s former president Alberto Fujimori faces a possible seven-year sentence today in a separate trial on abuse of authority charges, a day after erupting in anger during one of the hearings.
Fujimori, who ruled Peru from 1990-2000 before fleeing to Japan as his government imploded in scandal, faces a total of seven human rights and corruption charges, and multiple trials.
Yesterday, an indignant Fujimori shouted his innocence and waved his arms in outrage as he went on trial in Lima accused of authorising an army death squad to kill left-wing rebels and collaborators.
He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted for his alleged role in the killings that came amid a government crackdown on a bloody Maoist uprising.
A judge will issue a verdict today in a separate trial accusing Fujimori of ordering a search without a warrant of the apartment of the wife of his former spy chief seven years ago.
The prosecutor in the trial, which has been conducted in closed hearings because it involved a minor charge, is seeking a sentence of seven years and a €218,000 fine.
A Judicial Branch news release last week said 69-year-old Fujimori would be sentenced today. The judge is expected to announce the verdict and sentence together.
Fujimori has acknowledged ordering an aide to oversee the search without a court order. But he justified it as part of a nationwide manhunt for Vladimiro Montesinos, then head of Peru’s intelligence service, after Switzerland accused him of money laundering.
The former president has denied prosecution claims he was looking for evidence that might have implicated him in Montesinos’ illegal activities.
Yesterday, Fujimori exploded in rage on the first day of his public trial before a panel of three Supreme Court judges on charges of murder and kidnapping.
“I received a country … almost in collapse, exhausted by hyperinflation, international financial isolation and widespread terrorism,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion.
“My government rescued the human rights of 25 million Peruvians with no exceptions. If any detestable acts were committed, I condemn them, but they were not done on my orders.
“I reject the charges totally. I am innocent and do not accept the prosecutor’s accusation.”
The former maths professor faces charges in the trial that he authorised the 1992 death-squad killings of nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University and the 1991 killings of 15 people in a tenement in Lima’s Barrios Altos neighbourhood.
He also is charged with ordering the kidnapping of a prominent journalist and a businessman who were interrogated by army intelligence agents and released.
In later trials, judges will decide whether Fujimori illegally used €9.7m in state money to pay Montesinos to quit, authorised bribes to congressmen and illegal phone taps, and secretly bought a TV station for political propaganda with state money.
