Fujimori held by Peru authorities

Former president extradited from Chile to face human rights and corruption charges.

Peru Fujimori supporters
Fujimori's followers showed their support for the former leader as he returned to Peru [Reuters]

Flag-waving supporters, hoping he will escape a lengthy sentence and mount a political comeback, cheered his arrival at a Lima airport.
 
However his critics were delighted that justice would finally be served.
 
“I am happy and satisfied. After so much despair for so long, we haven’t fought in vain,” said Gisela Ortiz, whose brother was murdered in 1992 by a government death squad.
 
Profile

undefined
Alberto Fujimori

Fujimori’s administration collapsed seven years ago and prosecutors in Peru want to try him on charges of embezzling $15 million and using excessive force to combat the Maoist rebel group, the Shining Path.

Fujimori, who ruled Peru between 1990 and 2000, has been under house arrest in Chile since November 2005.

On Friday, Fujimori, who says the charges are politically motivated, acknowledged that his government had made mistakes, but said his conscience is clear.

 

“This does not mean that I’ve been tried, much less convicted. … I hope that in Peru there exists the due process to clarify the accusations against me,” he told the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio on Saturday.

Embezzlement charges

 
Lima has accused Fujimori of responsibility for atrocities carried out by the army’s Colina Group squadron, including the massacre in 1992 by state forces of nine students at La Cantuta University, and the killing of 15 people in an area of Lima in 1991.

undefined
Fujimori has said he will fight to clear his
name [AFP]

But while acknowledging “gross failures” in office, Fujimori told Peru’s RPP radio: “In the trials themselves, I will show that I acted in a correct manner.”

 
Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, a Peruvian congresswoman, called on supporters to show up at the airport in Lima to give him a warm welcome on his return.
  
“I call on Fujimoristas to mobilise … we will demonstrate that he is innocent of the charges,” she said at a news conference.
 
In Lima, the government of President Alan Garcia urged Peruvians to not let the pending trial of Fujimori, a polarizing figure, become “an issue of division.”

Peru has pledged a fair trial and dignified treatment for the former president during his detention.
  
“Democracy will demonstrate it is morally superior to the dictatorship once the case gets under way,” Jorge de Castillo, Peruvian prime minister said on Saturday.

He insisted Fujimori will be treated with “equity and justice”.
 
Japanese haven

Fujimori was born to Japanese parents and, after fleeing Peru in 2000, he spent five years in Japan where he later resigned as president via a fax message.

A former academic, he became president in 1990, defeating Mario Vargas Llosa, the renowned writer.

Japan confirmed Fujimori’s citizenship and consistently refused extradition requests from Lima before he flew unannounced to Chile in 2005 to launch another bid for Peru’s presidency.

While under house arrest in Santiago, Fujimori even made an unsuccessful attempt to be elected to Japan’s parliament, a candidacy that critics in Peru saw as another bid to avoid prosecution.

Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies