Fujimori apologises for Peru death squad killings

Peru’s former president Alberto Fujimori, who is on trial for murder and kidnapping, apologised for two death squad massacres for which he is facing up to 30 years in prison.

Fujimori, 69, is accused of authorising the 1991 military death-squad killings of 15 people, including an eight-year-old boy, in a tenement in Lima’s Barrios Altos neighbourhood and the 1992 killings of nine students and a professor at Lima’s La Cantuta University.

“I ask for forgiveness from all the victims,” Fujimori told the court, responding to questioning from a lawyer representing the victims’ families. “It hurt my soul.”

Fujimori’s congresswoman daughter, Keiko, said that her father was sorry that the massacres took place during his administration but that he did not accept responsibility for them.

“On several occasions, he has said that he is sorry for the events that took place in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta, the same way he regrets the deaths caused by the terrorists,” she said, referring to the Shining Path rebels who waged a campaign of massacres, political assassinations and bombings in the 1980s and early 1990s.

“This does not mean that my father assumes responsibility for it,” the former president’s daughter told reporters outside the police base where Fujimori’s trial is being held.

Victims’ relatives said Fujimori’s apology came too late. Francisco Soberon, director of Peru’s human rights group Aprodeh, called it “opportunistic”.

Fujimori “had more than 15 years to ask the relatives’ forgiveness ... but he didn’t do it”, said Gisela Ortiz, whose brother was one of the students killed at La Cantuta University.

Fujimori has denied having any knowledge of the squad’s activities, and has said he never authorised Vladimiro Montesinos, his now-jailed intelligence chief and a powerbroker in his autocratic regime, to lead a dirty war against the Shining Path.

In 2000, Fujimori fled to Japan, where his parents were born, as his government collapsed amid a corruption scandal involving Montesinos. He flew to Chile in 2005 in an apparent attempt to stage a return to Peruvian politics.

Chile instead extradited him to Peru in September to stand trial on corruption and human rights abuse charges.