Fujimori Sentenced For Peru Killings

MATT MOFFETT

In a landmark human-rights case, a Peruvian Supreme Court panel sentenced former President Alberto Fujimori to 25 years in prison for his involvement in two military massacres during a conflict with leftist guerrillas in the early 1990s.

Mr. Fujimori's decadelong rule during the 1990s started with economic and military triumphs and unraveled amid corruption scandals.

After a 15-month trial, the three-judge panel ruled that a military death squad known as the Colina Group was operating with the complicity of Mr. Fujimori when it carried out two massacres in the early 1990s.

One case involved the killing of 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, in 1991. The other involved the kidnapping and disappearance of a university professor and nine students in 1992. Mr. Fujimori was also found guilty of separate abductions of a journalist and a businessman.

Mr. Fujimori, who has been a prisoner in Peru since he was extradited from Chile in September 2007, said he plans to appeal the verdict.

Political and legal analysts hailed the judges' decision as auspicious for Latin America, where courts often are reluctant to convict the powerful out of fear of retribution.

"Overall it's a good thing, because it solidifies institutions and shows that the justice system works for big fish," said Julio Carrion, a political scientist at the University of Delaware.

Mr. Fujimori, a former agronomy professor who won the presidency in 1990, became hugely popular after wielding free-market policies to conquer raging inflation and crushing the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas who had terrorized Peru since 1980.

But the intelligence apparatus he created to counter guerrillas went out of control, and involved itself in rights abuses, corruption schemes and political espionage. Increasingly unpopular due to corruption revelations, Mr. Fujimori abandoned his office in 2000, sending a resignation letter to Lima by fax during a trip to Japan. While visiting Chile in 2005, he was detained and subsequently extradited to Peru on human-rights charges.

In remarks to the court last week, Mr. Fujimori, 70 years old, showed he hadn't lost the swagger he was known for while governing, proclaiming his innocence and asserting that he had saved the country from the Maoists. When he took office, Mr. Fujimori said, Peru "wasn't at the edge of the abyss, but at the bottom of the abyss." He added: "I faced the problem and didn't turn my back on it."

In court Tuesday, Mr. Fujimori maintained a stoic expression as the guilty sentence was read, keeping his head down and writing on a notepad.

Polls indicate that most Peruvians support a guilty verdict. But Mr. Carrion, the political scientist, notes that Mr. Fujimori's legacy is still having a toxic effect on Peru's political culture today. He says that the cynicism about government that took root during the Fujimori years explains why polls show Peruvians still have very little faith in political institutions or democracy, even though the economy has been robust.

Mr. Fujimori's 34-year-old daughter, Keiko, a member of Congress, has emerged as a political force who is carrying on his legacy. She has attracted loyal followers of her father, as well as people who consider her a charismatic figure in her own right.