Alberto Fujimori's arrest, trial and guilty as charged
Alberto Fujimori's arrest, trial
and guilty
as charged
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Alberto Fujimori
藤森 謙也 |
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Born
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Penalty
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in prison (Abuse of power charges)
Seven and one-half years in prison (25 years in prison (Human rights abuses, murder and kidnapping charges) Six years Embezzlement charges) Six years in prison (Corruption and bribery charges) |
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Conviction status
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Convicted
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Occupation
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Spouse
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Susana Higuchi (divorced)
Satomi Kataoka |
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was
arrested and tried for a
number of crimes related to corruption and human rights abuses that occurred during his government.
Fujimori’s
Background
After Fujimori fled to Japan, the government of Peru requested his extradition. Because Japan recognizes Fujimori as a
Japanese citizen rather than a Peruvian citizen due to theMaster Nationality Rule, and because Japan refuses to extradite its citizens to
other countries, Fujimori was not extradited from Japan.
Arrest in Chile
On November 6, 2005, Alberto Fujimori unexpectedly arrived
in Santiago, Chile, on a private aircraft, having flown via Tijuana from Tokyo. His flight had passed
through Peruvian airspace on its path from Mexico to Chile. There were numerous
firings over alleged negligence in the handling of the Fujimori flight to
Chile.[1] As investigations continued, two Chilean and four Mexican
immigration officers were dismissed for failing to notify superiors of
Fujimori's stop at the time of his arrival. Colonel Carlos Medel, head of Interpol in Lima, was also fired for
negligence, apparently having ordered his staff to switch off the 24-hour
Interpol warning system at the time of the overflight.[1]
Mexican officials suggested Fujimori was not arrested in
Mexico because there was no judicial order for his arrest. Chilean officials issued
similar statements, reiterating that Chilean courts must process international
arrest warrants to make them valid.[citation needed]
Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, after learning of the arrival of Fujimori in Chile, called for an
"urgent meeting" in the governmental palace. Toledo called Chile's
foreign minister, Ignacio Walker, and requested the detention of Fujimori. A
few hours later, Fujimori was detained on an arrest warrant issued by a Chilean judge, who was told by Chile's Supreme Court to consider Lima's request for Fujimori's pre-trial
detention, as part of the extradition process.[2]
Fujimori was then transferred to the School of
Investigations, Chile's Investigative Police academy,
where he spent the night. Notified of the reasons for his arrest, Fujimori
petitioned for provisional freedom during the extradition proceedings, but his
petition was denied. Later in the day, he was transferred to the School of
Gendarmerie, a training academy for corrections officers, where he was detained
until May 2006.
Extradition proceedingst
The decision whether or not to extradite Fujimori was
delegated by the Chilean government to the Supreme Court, following precedent
dating to a 1932 extradition treaty between the two nations. Chilean law
suggests that in addition to the terms of the treaty, extradition requests must
also be based on whether there is sufficient evidence against the accused – not
necessarily enough to convict him of the charges, but sufficient to justify
(from a Chilean legal point of view) the indictments the accused faces. This
meant that Peruvian prosecutors had to demonstrate that the crimes for which
Fujimori has been charged in Peru were just as severe in Chile.[3]
Peru, which had sixty days to issue an extradition request,
sent a high-level delegation led by Interior Minister Rómulo Pizarro and a top
prosecutor; this action, together with the fact that president Toledo said, on
television, that "he personally will welcome Fujimori at the airport and
conduct him to the jail," defined the situation as a 'political
prosecution', according to many analysts. The government of Japan asked for
"fair treatment" for Fujimori.
On May 18, 2006 Fujimori was granted bail (set at US $2,830)
by the Chilean Supreme Court and was released from detention and whisked away
to a house rented for him by his family in the Las Condes neighborhood of Santiago. According to
Fujii Takahiko, one of the Japanese financiers who had been covering some of
Fujimori's expenses, "Fujimori [calmly waited] for the decision of the
Chilean Supreme Court because he [had] the assurance that he [would] not be
extradited." It was reported that Fujii covered the cost of renting the
house, while a cadre of businessmen and Japanese friends covered his living
expenses. Fujii, a car exporter by trade, reported that Fujimori had largely
forgotten his knowledge of the Japanese language.,[4] [5] Because he was granted provisional freedom, Fujimori was not allowed
to leave Chile. There were fears among some Peruvians that he could have
escaped from the country.
Fujimori arrived at a time of tense relations between Chile
and Peru, after Peru's Congress passed a law the previous week in an attempt to reclaim sea
territory from Chile. Chilean foreign minister, Ignacio Walker, said Fujimori's
action demonstrated "a very imprudent, very irresponsible attitude,
considering this is the most difficult week we have had with Peru in the last
decade". In a media statement, Fujimori said that he would stay in Chile
temporarily while launching his candidacy for Peruvian president in the April
2006 elections.
Cesar Nakasaki, Fujimori's lawyer, in a television interview said Chile,
because of its Judiciary reputation, was chosen as a preliminary step before
travelling on to Peru; other analysts speculated that Fujimori chose Chile for
its proximity to Peru and for the fact that extraditions from Chile to Peru had
proved difficult in recent years.[citation needed]
The government of Peru sent a number of extradition requests
to Chile concerning Fujimori. It requested his extradition to stand trial for
murder in the cases of the Barrios Altos massacre and the La Cantuta massacre, both carried out by Grupo Colina.
It also requested his extradition for kidnapping Samuel Dyer and Gustavo Gorriti, both of whom were abducted by Peruvian Army personnel during Fujimori's self-coup and brought to the basements of the Intelligence Service.
Additionally, he was charged with usurpation of
powers and abuse of authority for ordering the illegal search and seizure of a
house owned by Vladimiro Montesinos' wife; illicit association
to commit a crime, embezzlement, and inserting false statements in a public document for paying Montesinos
US$ 15 million; illicit association to commit a crime and active corruption of authorities for paying congressmen to switch
parties and inform on the opposition parties; telephonic interference or eavesdropping, illicit association to commit a crime, and embezzlement for authorizing
the illegal wiretapping of opposition figure's phones; and illicit association
to commit a crime, embezzlement, and usurpation of powers for engaging in a
fraudulent purchase of tractors from China and bribing newspapers and
television stations with state money in order to obtain favorable news
coverage.
Subsequently, the Chilean judge overseeing the extradition
proceedings refused to accept new evidence regarding the 10 corruption and two
human rights charges, which, according to the BBC News' Dan Collyns,
"would have prolonged the case by several months".[6] On November 22, 2006, the Peruvian government issued a new arrest
warrant for Fujimori, alleging that he ordered the death of 20 members of Sendero Luminoso in 1992. Fujimori denied the charge.[7]
On January 11, 2007 Chile's Supreme Court rejected a motion
for an additional investigation filed by lawyers representing Fujimori. The new
ruling coincided with the Peruvian government's anger over a recent Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ruling that found Peru guilty of crimes committed during
former president’s regime.[8] The Peruvian government expressed fresh concern that Fujimori might
try to escape from Chile.[9] Although Fujimori was on parole, with stipulations
banning him from leaving Chile, at the end of January 2007 he traveled to a
beach resort aboard a private airplane.
On February 1, 2007 Reuters reported that
the Peruvian government's
final report on Fujimori's extradition included additional evidence supporting the former president's links
to human rights abuses. In the words of Carlos Briceno, Peru's
special corruption prosecutor, "We've practically finished the report, in which there is
irrefutable proof [against Fujimori]". For his part, Fujimori denied the
human rights and embezzlement charges.
Pedro Fujimori
On February 8, 2007 the Peruvian government filed a formal
request with the United States for the extradition of Fujimori's younger
brother, Pedro Fujimori. According to the head
of the Peruvian Justice Ministry's Unit for Extraditions, Omar Chehade, Pedro Fujimori was charged
with corruption associated with reception of illegal donations for an NGO,
Apenkai, founded at the outset of Fujimori’s first term in office. Chehade
reported to Reuters that Pedro Fujimori oversaw Japanese donations to the
Peruvian government, and that he allegedly siphoned off as much as US $30
million into his own personal bank accounts in the United States. A
spokesperson for the Fujimorista party, Congressman Carlos Raffo, denied the charges calling them unsubstantiated, and noted that there
are no signs of corruption on the part of Pedro Fujimori.[10]
Chilean judge rejects Fujimori
extradition
On July 20, 2007 the Chilean Supreme Court judge Orlando Álvarez, ruled that he had not found any evidence linking former president
Alberto Fujimori with all the corruption cases and alleged human rights
violations of which the Toledo congress had accused him.[11](The judge's ruling can be found here). Judge Álvarez
declared to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio that all the accusations were based on gossip and innuendo; "he
[Fujimori] was supposed to know those criminal acts".[citation needed]
The opinion was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court.[citation needed] The Supreme Court
announced that it would reach a decision on September 5, 2007.[citation needed] This provoked a
strong reaction from Omar Chehade, one of the chief prosecutors, who declared
that he had information that the decision would be "cooked" and that
there was no way that the Supreme Court could possibly read and analyze all the
petitions submitted to it in such a short time.[citation needed] This opinion was
immediately repudiated by many.[citation needed]
Chilean Supreme Court grants Fujimori
extradition
The Chilean Supreme Court granted Fujimori's extradition to
Peru on September 21, 2007, on 7 of 13 charges. The Barrios Altos massacre and La Cantuta massacre related charges were accepted unanimously, while four
other corruption-related charges were passed by a majority of votes. One
corruption charge was passed unanimously.[12]
On the same day, Peruvian police sent an airplane to receive
Fujimori. The plane (with Peru's General Director of National Police, David
Rodriguez, four Interpol officers and physicians) arrived in Santiago on the
morning of September 22. The following day, the plane returned to Lima's Las
Palmas air force base with Fujimori on board. He was flown by helicopter to a
police base, to be held in detention until a permanent facility was prepared.[13]
First conviction
Fujimori confessed that he had ordered a warrantless search
of Vladimiro Montesinos's wife's apartment,[14] and on December 11, 2007, the Peruvian court sentenced him to six
years in prison and fined him 400,000 soles (135,000 U.S. dollars) for abuse of
powers in ordering this search, which took place shortly before he left office.[14][15]
On April 10, 2008, the Supreme Court of Peru upheld Fujimori's sentence of six years in the case.[16]
Peruvian General Elections
Martha Chávez was Sí Cumple's presidential candidate in the April 9, 2006 general election (under the Alianza por el Futuro banner). Fujimori's daughter, Keiko Fujimori was a congressional candidate representing the same alliance. While
Chávez got 7.43% of the first-round vote (placed 4th) for presidency and was
eliminated, Keiko Fujimori received the highest vote for any single candidate
(with 602,869 votes) and took one of Sí Cumple's 13 seats in the new Congress.[17]
Some of Sí Cumple's members occupy powerful
positions in the resulting congress, such as Luisa Maria Cuculiza, who is the Vice-President of Congress, Rolando Souza, who
was formerly Alberto Fujimori's lawyer and now president of the International
Affairs Committee, and Santiago Fujimori, who is now president of the Energy Committee. Keiko Fujimori, is
president of the Peruvian-Chilean Friendship Commission.
Japanese politics
In June 2007, Fujimori announced his candidacy for the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet of Japan, under the banner of the People's New Party, a minor party with only eight lawmakers. Still under house
arrest in Chile at the time, Fujimori's initial campaign statements were
conveyed by party head Shizuka Kamei. Japan's government had determined
in 2000 that Fujimori holds Japanese citizenship. The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications issued a statement in response, pointing out that
there is no law banning participation in an election by someone under house
arrest in a foreign country.[18]
The announcement sparked speculation that Fujimori's
candidacy was a maneuver to win diplomatic immunity as an elected official and avoid trial in Peru. Chilean
President Michelle Bachelet said her country's Supreme Court would not be
influenced by the move and would soon decide whether to grant an extradition
request to return Fujimori to Peru.[19]
On July 11, 2007, Chile's Supreme Court turned down the
Peruvian government's request that Fujimori be extradited there to face charges
of human rights violations; however he remained under house arrest in Chile and
it was unclear whether he would be permitted to depart for Japan. Though much
of the Japanese public have a favorable view of Fujimori due to his role in the
resolution of the 1997Japanese embassy hostage crisis, members of the Democratic Party of
Japan and the Japanese Communist
Party questioned his
commitment to Japan and accused him of using the election to avoid justice in
Peru.[20]
Japan indicated on July 5, 2007 that it had no plans to ask
Chile to allow Alberto Fujimori to return for that month's upper house
elections. The leader of the People's New Party had urged Japan's Foreign
Minister to take up the issue with the government of Chile.[21] Fujimori ultimately lost the election.
Conviction for human rights abuses
On April 7, 2009, a three-judge panel of Peru's Supreme
Court convicted Fujimori on charges of human rights abuses, declaring that the "charges against him have been
proven beyond all reasonable doubt".[22][23] The panel found him guilty of ordering the Grupo Colinadeath squad to execute the November 1991 Barrios Altos massacre and the July 1992 La Cantuta Massacre, which resulted in the deaths of 25 people, and for taking
part in the kidnappings of Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer.[14][24]Fujimori's conviction marked the first time in history that a
democratically elected president had been tried and found guilty of human
rights abuses in his own country.[25] Fujimori was already serving a six-year prison sentence for his
December 2007 conviction on abuse of power charges. The trial for Fujimori's
human rights abuses lasted 15 months, and was postponed on multiple occasions
due to his ill health.[24][26] Later on April 7, the court sentenced Fujimori to 25 years in
prison.[27]
Ronald Gamarra Herrera, Executive Secretary of National Coordinator for Human
Rights of Peru and one of the lawyers representing the civil parties -the
families of the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta victims-, said to the press that
"there has not been hate, or revenge, or cruelty in Fujimori’s trial. What
there has been is justice. We are not happy for the pain of a man, nor of what
tragedy his family is going through. But yes it is comforting to know that
justice has been served and that the victims, after so many years, can rest in
peace".[28]
The Financial Times claimed that international observers had "hailed the trial as a
model of due process even before the verdict was read out". Michael Reed
of the International Center for Transitional Justice stated that, "Throughout 15 months the whole
Peruvian people have been actively living this process. This social engagement
is important … the decision will in fact demonstrate polarisation. The issue is
how the Peruvian state and Peruvian society deal with that polarization towards
the future." Maria McFarland, a Senior Researcher for Human Rights Watch, noted that the verdict was "absolutely the right
decision...[and] well grounded in all the evidence" and that the special
court would "go down in history as a model of what we want to see in terms
of rule of law and justice and progress in Latin America. So much has always
been focused on the power of the executive and the president and the strong man;
now suddenly the judiciary is having a say."[24][29]
After Fujimori's conviction had been announced, riots broke
out in the streets. In the Ate District, approximately twenty police officers had to break up a fight between
members of Fujimori's political party and a group from the local Peru's Workers
Confederation (CTP). It was believed that the riot broke out when about fifty
CTP members went to the police station and provoked a fight with some 300
Fujimori supporters.[30] Outside the court, relatives of victims clashed with Fujimori
supporters; the fights were broken up by riot police.[31]
Correo, a right-wing newspaper in Lima, published a poll on
April 9 claiming that 59.4% was against Fujimori's conviction, with rejection
to the sentence reaching 68.3% among the lower classes. Nevertheless the poll
doesn't clarify if those interviewed considered Fujimori innocent or if they
considered him guilty but did't approve the sentence itself.[32]
Guilty as Charged
Fujimori's trial for
human rights violations began fittingly on 10 December 2007, the anniversary of
the signing of the UN Declaration on Human Rights. It is not possible to offer
here a detailed analysis of the 16 months of public hearings; the thousands of
pages of documentary evidence offered by the prosecution, the civil parties and
the defense; and the thousands of pages of trial transcript. Instead, the
remainder of this article briefly examines the verdict, and then explores the
process itself to determine whether it avoided the shortcomings scholars have
pointed out often plague criminal trials for grave human rights violations. It
closes with a brief analysis of the impact of Fujimori's conviction for efforts
to achieve accountability in Peru, and its implications for the theory and
practice of transitional justice.
The verdict in the Fujimori case was widely hailed as
exceptionally thorough and analytically sound.51 The judges unanimously ruled to convict Fujimori of
aggravated homicide, assault and kidnapping in the Barrios Altos, Cantuta and
Gorriti/Dyer cases.52 The judges noted that they applied the maximum sentence
allowable by Peruvian law at the time the crimes were committed – 25 years in
prison – due to the ‘gravity and extent of the crimes’ and the ‘nature and
condition of the accused as former head of state.’53 The Court also ordered Fujimori to pay reparations of
$60,000 to the families of the victims in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta
cases and $15,000 each to Gorriti and Dyer. Finally, the Court determined that
the victims in both cases were not members of any terrorist organization – a
request by the civil parties meant as a reparative measure to survivors and
relatives of victims who have suffered stigmatization, threats and intimidation
due to unsubstantiated accusations that their family members were ‘terrorists.’54
The judges used the concept of autoría mediata to determine Fujimori's culpability in
these crimes. In Peruvian law, autoría
mediata is attributed
to those who have dominion over an ‘organized power apparatus’ and thus have
the power to order and direct the individual members of that apparatus to
commit crimes or, in this case, human rights violations.55 In the Fujimori case, the Court considered that the
prosecution had fully proven that the former president, as commander in chief
of the armed forces, had direct control over the Colina Group, a military unit
that operated from within the army intelligence services and that engaged in a
number of extralegal killings, forced disappearances and torture.56
The sentence outlines
the institutional framework in which Fujimori rose to power and, after 1991,
redefined the nation's counterinsurgency strategy. The Court confirmed the
prosecutor's argument that this new strategy, which Fujimori personally
directed, consisted of a formal public strategy that claimed to respect human
rights and a parallel, secret strategy designed to eliminate suspected
subversives. Fujimori directed the National Intelligence Service (SIN) to
oversee the newly created National Defense System, charged with coordinating
counterinsurgency efforts, and gave Montesinos control over all SIN operations.
Fujimori also made Montesinos his representative and intermediary vis-à-vis the
armed forces.
Under the rubric of
the SIN, Montesinos designated the army intelligence services to implement the
new counterinsurgency strategy. This resulted in the creation of the Colina
Group. Through his control over the army and the intelligence services, the
Court argued, Fujimori had direct control over and responsibility for the acts
of the Colina Group. The Court also established that when aspects of the Colina
Group's activities came into public light, Fujimori and his allies engaged in a
series of actions designed to cover up these crimes, which were never duly
punished and whose authors were ultimately protected by the amnesty laws passed
by congress and promulgated by Fujimori in 1995.
The Court specifically addressed the nature of evidentiary
proof required in such cases. It argued that in criminal enterprises of this
kind, there is unlikely to be direct proof of culpability, such as a written
order or legislation; often, whatever documentary evidence that may have existed
has been destroyed.57 ‘It is precisely the clandestine nature and the illicit
practice of an organization,’ the judges argued, ‘that makes impossible, for
obvious reasons, the prospect of demonstrating its existence and the acts it
commits via normative measures’ or other types of direct proof.58This requires the
careful reconstruction and contrasting of facts and events through
circumstantial and other probatory evidence. The judges thus directly refuted a
key argument of Fujimori's defense: that without an order signed by Fujimori
ordering the killings or kidnappings, he could not be found guilty.
The judges drew on the Inter-American Court's 2006 ruling
on the Cantuta case, as well as a 2005 ruling by Peru's Constitutional Tribunal
and the Final Report of the CVR, to argue that the crimes for which they found
Fujimori guilty formed part of a broader pattern of ‘state crimes’ that could
not have been committed without the prior knowledge of high-ranking government
and military authorities, including Fujimori himself.59The judges determined
that the Colina Group was active during a 15-month period between 1991 and
1992, and that it committed at least 50 assassinations, including those of
Barrios Altos and La Cantuta.60 The Court found evidence of a pattern of systematic
violations of human rights and, drawing widely on international jurisprudence,
defined these as ‘crimes against humanity’:The assassinations and aggravated
assaults committed in Barrios Altos and Cantuta are also crimes against
humanity [f]undamentally because they were committed in the framework of a
state policy of selective but systematic elimination of presumed members of
subversive groups.61
The judges note that their findings coincide with those of
the Inter-American Court, as well as Peru's Constitutional Tribunal, which
previously categorized the Barrios Altos and Cantuta massacres as crimes
against humanity.62 But, they argued, the Inter-American Court can determine
only the culpability of the state, not of individuals, and it is exclusively
the task of the domestic tribunal to determine individual criminal
responsibility and impose corresponding sanctions. This careful delineation of
the role of international tribunals such as the Inter-American Court and their
relationship to Peru's domestic legal system highlights the principle of
complementarity at its best, and reveals how international tribunals can
contribute to the efforts of domestic courts to administer justice in complex
cases of grave human rights violations.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
References
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^ a b "Peruvian
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3.
^ Benjamin
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Santiago Times 10 February 2007.
11.
^ Excerpts from Judge
Orlando Álvarez Hernández’s decision regarding the extradition of Alberto
Fujimori from Chile to Peru. Translated by Michael Baney.
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^ a b c "Peru's Fujimori
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^http://www.aprodeh.org.pe/fujimori2007/documentos/Sentencia_allanamiento_fujimori.pdfSentence in the case
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^ The Judgment
Against Fujimori for Human Rights Violations.American University
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^ "Peru's Fujimori
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^ a b c Mapstone, Naomi
(2009-04-07). "Fujimori
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^ "Peru's Fujimori
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^ "Interview with Ronald Gamarra: Fujimori
appeal could resolve itself in a more political rather than judicial
context".Fujimori on Trial. 2009-07-13. Retrieved
2011-04-15.
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^ Partlow, Joshua
(2009-04-07). "Former Peruvian
President Fujimori Convicted in Murder, Kidnapping Trial". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-04-07.
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^ http://www.correoperu.com.pe/correo/nota.php?txtEdi_id=4&txtSecci_id=101&txtSecci_parent=&txtNota_id=34893
33.
Guilty as Charged: The
Trial of Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori for Human Rights
Violations. Jo-Marie Burt.
