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Alberto Fujimori, the former president of Peru, has left Chile on Saturday in the custody of Peruvian police just one day after Chile’s Supreme Court decided to send him back to his homeland to face charges of human rights abuse and corruption.
A Chilean police helicopter flew Fujimori from his residence in a suburb of Santiago to the national airport where a plane belonging to the Peruvian National Police was expecting him.
Peru’s police chief General David Nicolas Rodriguez, a doctor and additional security forces were on board the plane which took the controversial former leader to Lima in the morning hours.
Peruvian authorities dispatched nearly 200 law enforcement officers at the airport in Lima, from where Fujimori will be taken to a detention facility until the trial begins.
The 69-year-old former president was extradited after the Chilean Supreme Court analyzed the two counts of human rights abuses and five counts of corruption charges filed against him, deciding he must face trial in Peru.
The Supreme Court presiding judge Alberto Chaigneau said Friday that the massacres at Barrios Altos and La Cantuta were the factors which determined the court to approve Fujimori’s extradition.
For the past months he has been under house arrest awaiting the court’s decision on his extradition trial. Fujimori was president of Peru between 1990 and 2000, a decade of leadership tainted by numerous scandals which turned the 69-year-old politician into a controversial public figure.
When his tenure ended, Fujimori fled to Japan in an attempt to dodge corruption charges pressed against him by the new government. He remained in Japan until 2005, when he fled to Chile where he could set up a campaign for the presidential election.
But his plans were shattered by Chilean police officers who detained and imprisoned him in November 2005.
In July 2007, a Supreme Court judge said there is not enough evidence to approve his extradition and rejected the demands of Peruvian authorities
According to the treaty sealed by Peru and Chile, Fujimori will be tried in his homeland only for the charges accepted by Chile’s court of last resort.
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