This Monday, December 18, Peru witnessed the first session of a new trial against former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-200), this time accused of the death of six peasants in 1992. Recently released after 16 years in prison, If found guilty, Fujimori would return behind bars for 25 years, a sentence sought by the Prosecutor's Office.
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Former president Alberto Fujimori, 85, connected remotely this Monday, December 18, to the hearing on a new trial for the massacre of six people in 1992.
The former president was accompanied by his daughter and former presidential candidate, Keiko Fujimori, with whom he has shared a residence since last December 6, when a “humanitarian” pardon promoted by former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2017 and restored by the Constitutional Court this year left him free.
Alberto Fujimori, affected by his advanced age and multiple illnesses, only interacted with the authorities to mention where he was, while his lawyer presented the defense arguments, stating that “none of the affected people” links the former president to the case.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Elsa Delgado Pérez, points to the former president (1990-2000) to be the head of command in the implementation of a policy for the “elimination of alleged terrorist elements”which triggered the creation of the Colina Group, a covert squad to control dissidents during the Fujimori period.
The Pativilca Case
The members of the Colina Group have been related to multiple trials regarding forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and arbitrary detentions. This time, the Peruvian Justice links them with the murder of six people in the town of Pativilca, about 200 kilometers north of Lima, in January 1992.
Prosecutor Delgado, who requests preventive detention for the former head of state, points to Fujimori as the “mediate author” of the massacre in Pativilca.
Also connected to this Monday's hearing were Fujimori's former intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, from the Callao Naval Base, and former military leaders and former members of Colina, from the prisons where they are being held.
Montesinos “ordered, with the knowledge and consent of Alberto Fujimori, that Colina carry out this intelligence operation aimed at eliminating alleged terrorist elements,” Delgado stated during the session, when referring to the former intelligence advisor during the Fujimori period and who is currently imprisoned for homicide.
Fujimori and his long judicial history
A few weeks after being released, Alberto Fujimori is once again in the middle of a judicial process in Peru.
In 2009, a very similar case landed Fujimori in jail, after the Peruvian Prosecutor's Office found him guilty of direct responsibility for the massacres of Barrios Altos and the Enrique Guzmán y Valle National University of Education, popularly known as La Cantuta. For these cases, the former president was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Sixteen years later, the Constitutional Court of Peru demanded the release of the former president, already at an advanced age, for “humanitarian” reasons. Although the Peruvian body's decision was refuted by the judge in charge of his execution, the Peruvian court ordered Fujimori's release earlier this month.
Contrary to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which had asked the Peruvian State not to release Fujimori, the Judiciary of the South American country referred to its sovereign character and established that the international organization has no jurisdiction to deprive national organizations of Peru from the execution of its own rulings.
Already released, the former president faces trial again, accused of violating human rights during his presidential term, when the state conflict against guerrillas such as the Shining Path caused the death of more than 70,000 people, in addition to the disappearance of some 20,000.
With EFE, AFP and local media
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