Peru’s highly controversial former president Alberto Fujimori was released from prison on Wednesday evening at 6:30 PM local time. Fujimori, 85, was serving a 25-year prison sentence for human rights violations under his rule in the 1990s, but the Constitutional Court ordered his immediate release on Tuesday on “humanitarian grounds”. Fujimori suffers from serious health problems, including respiratory disease, facial paralysis and hypertension.
The court thus upheld a later overturned 2017 pardon from then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, which was met with much criticism from human rights activists and the families of his victims. Last year, the court also ruled in Fujimori’s favor, but it was suspended under pressure from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Assassination squads
After being in power from 1990 to 2000, Fujimori was convicted in 2009 of ordering the mass murder of 25 people and kidnappings. At the time, his government waged a fierce battle against the Maoist Shining Path rebel movement and deployed ruthless assassination squads that also caused many victims among ordinary citizens.
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Fujimori is regarded by many Peruvians as a cruel dictator who abused democracy, but others see him as a hero because of his economic policies and because he is said to have protected the country from terrorists. When he was pardoned in 2017, Fujimori asked “forgiveness” from the population from a hospital bed. He said at the time that his government was widely appreciated, but that he also had to acknowledge that he had “disappointed many.”
Release broadcast live
After spending another five years in prison, Fujimori’s new release from Barbadillo prison in the east of the capital Lima was broadcast live on Peruvian television on Wednesday.
He was picked up by two of his children, including his daughter Keiko, who has already unsuccessfully run for the presidency of Peru three times and was detained for several months in 2020 on suspicion of corruption. A group of enthusiastic supporters surrounded the gray car carrying the frail-looking Fujimori and cheered him on.
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