Fujimori Extradited to Peru

by: D. Pandian

Yesterday, the former Peruvian President, Alberto K. Fujimori, was detained by Peruvian police and flown to Lima, Peru to face human rights and corruption charges.¹ The Supreme Court of Chile overturned a previous decision last Friday, finding that the ex-president could be extradited to Peru under the laws of Chile.²

Fujimori, who ruled Peru from 1990 to 2000, fled the country to Japan as his own government amidst corruption scandals.³ In 2005, he traveled to Chile hoping to eventually return to Peru and recapture his former position.⁴ However, Chilean authorities, having received an extradition request from Peruvian prosecutors, detained Fujimori.⁵

Fujimori’s confidence that the people of Peru would reelect him seems reckless initially. Yet, despite the negative circumstances in which he left Peru in 2000, Fujimori has retained the a significant amount of support from members of the Peruvian government and the Peruvian people, largely due to the gains he made in reducing the threat of the Shining Path guerilla movement.⁶ But while Peruvians might be willing to forget the violations that occurred under his watch, the voluminous record of his violations point more to the end of his political career.⁷

In 1991, Fujimori formed the Colina Group, a squad of military and intelligence operatives, who allegedly began committing a series of extrajudicial killings and "disappearances" as part of a strategy of physical elimination of suspected subversives.⁸ Notable among the Colina Group’s activites were the La Cantuta/Barrios Altos killings, which resulted in the deaths of 25 persons in two separate events.⁹  In 1992, Fujimori dissolved the opposition controlled Congress in a "self-coup" and took total control of the government.¹⁰ In the following years, he drew up a new constitution and replaced much of the judiciary.¹¹ After being reelected in 1995, Fujimori ordered his close personal adviser, Vladimiro Montesinos, be given de facto control over the National Intelligence Service (SIN) and according to witness accounts, ordered that millions of dollars be diverted to the SIN from the budgets of other armed forces.¹² In turn, Montesinos used these funds as well as other illicitly obtained funds, to buy off politicians, co-opt judges, and wrest editorial control from media owners.¹³ SIN tapped the phones of journalists, civil society activists, and politicians, kept them under observation, and engaged in undercover operations to intimidate and threaten them.¹⁴ By 2000, through corruption, extortion and intimidation, the presidency achieved near-total control not only over the Congress, but also over the judiciary, the prosecutorial system, the electoral monitoring bodies, the financial and tax system and a substantial part of the media.¹⁵

Human Rights Watch notes that this is the first time a court has ordered the extradition of a former head of state to be tried for gross human rights violations in his home country.¹⁷

1. Simon Romero, Chile Returns Fujimori to Peru to Face Charges, New York Times, Sept 23, 2007, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/world/americas/23peru.html.
2. Id.
3. Id.
4. Id.
5. Id.
6. Human Rights Watch, Probable Cause: Evidence Implicating Fujimori (2005).
7. Id.
8. Id.
9. Id.
10. Id.
11. Id.
12. Id.
13. Id.
14. Id.
15. Id.
16. Chile: Supreme Court Extradites Fujimori, Human Rights Watch, Sept. 21, 2007, available at http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/09/21/chile16918.htm.