The former Peruvian President, Alberto Fujimori, has been
convicted Tuesday, to six years in prison and a $135,000 fine for abuse of
power while running the state. He is the first ex-Peruvian president found
guilty of crimes committed while in office.
Fujimori, 69, was the head of Peru from 1990 to 2000. After that,
he ran to Japan,
his ancestral homeland, as his government collapsed amid charges of corruption.
Japan admitted him as a
citizen and denied Peru’s
extradition requests. He was extradited from Chile in September.
Supreme Court Judge Pedro Urbina convicted Fujimori for
ordering the aide to break into the house of intelligence Chief Vladimiro
Montesinos on November 7, 2000. The latter had hidden 40 boxes of videos and
tapes accusing Fujimori’s government of corruption. The search of the apartment
was conducted without a court order. Montesinos is currently jailed being
accused of dozens of crimes.
"If this was a political persecution before, now it's
become a judicial persecution," said Keiko Fujimori, the ex-president’s
daughter and a popular member of the Congress, according to Reuters. Moreover,
she called the sentence excessive and accused the court of bias.
“I received a country almost in
collapse, exhausted by hyperinflation, international financial isolation and
widespread terrorism. My government rescued the human rights of 25 million Peruvians
with no exceptions. If any detestable acts were committed, I condemn them, but
they were not done on my orders. I reject the charges totally,” Fujimori
shouted before the Supreme Court judges during the trial begun Monday in Lima, the New York Times
reported.
Cesar Nakazaki, Fujimori’s lawyer had asked the Court for a
reduced sentence of four years, saying that his client was not the only one who
committed the crime but simply the “instigator.”
Fujimori is also trialed
on human rights charges. In a separate trial, which began this week, he is
accused of ordering two massacres that killed 25-suspected sympathizers of the
Shining Path guerilla group in the early 1990s and forced disappearance. Fujimori
could be sentenced to 30 years if found guilty of those crimes.
Fujimori will present himself in front of the Court for two
more trials, after his current trail. He faces charges of illegally paying $15
million in state funds to Montesinos, to make him leave his post in one of the
trials. In the other trial, he faces charges of bribing opposition congressmen,
illegal wire tapping of state funds to buy a television station to support his
re-election campaign. Fujimori said he would plead not guilty of those charges.
