Peru: Mr. Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s former President, was released from prison, who had been jailed for corruption and human rights violations while in office.
The country’s highest court granted him a humanitarian pardon, despite a request from the regional Inter-American Court of Human Rights to delay his release.
The son of Japanese immigrants, Mr. Fujimori was a highly controversial figure before and after his hard-line tenure, which ran from 1990 to 2000, when he resigned following a bribery scandal.
During Mr. Fujimori’s tenure, an estimated 69,000 people were killed in his authoritarian government’s crackdown on two brutal insurgencies.
However, the former President had an authoritarian streak and used security forces to crack down on opponents.
In 2009, he was given a 25-year prison sentence by a special Supreme Court tribunal for authorizing the operation of a death squad responsible for killing civilians.
But in December 2017, he was taken from prison to a hospital because of health concerns. He was suffering from low blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythm.
At the time of his pardon, then-Peruvian President, Mr. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s, office said that Mr. Fujimori “suffers from a progressive, degenerative and incurable disease.”
Mr. Fujimori stated that, “I am aware that the results during my government on one side were well received, but I recognize that I have also disappointed others, and I ask them to forgive me with all my heart.”
According to Human Rights Watch, the charges related to his authorization of a death squad that was tied to the “extrajudicial execution of 15 people in the Barrios Altos district of Lima, the enforced disappearance and murder of nine students and a teacher from La Cantuta University, and two abductions.”
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