Peru’s highest court ruled this Thursday (17) that Alberto Fujimori, the country’s leader from 1990 to 2000, can be released from prison where he is serving time for human rights violations and crimes against humanity.
At the age of 83, the former dictator had already benefited from a similar decision in 2017, but the Justice, at the time, revoked the pardon. This time, after appointing judges deemed more sympathetic to Fujimori, he will once again be able to receive a pardon.
Judge Eloy Espinosa-Saldana confirmed the court’s decision, by four votes to three, in comments made to the Peruvian press. It remains unclear, however, whether the former dictator will in fact leave prison or whether new judicial appeals could prevent the decision.
Fujimori is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption for the massacres in Barrios Altos (1991) and La Cantuta (1992), where an army death squad killed 25 people, including a child, in an alleged anti-terrorist operation during his term of office.
Imprisoned since 2007, Fujimori became ill in October 2021 and urgently needed to be transferred from prison. He received oxygen due to breathing problems linked to atrial fibrillation – a type of cardiac arrhythmia – that has been affecting him since 2018 and, according to doctors, he had tachycardia – an abnormal acceleration of the heartbeat – and had to undergo the procedure.
Fujimori also suffers from neurological problems that have led to facial paralysis and hypertension. The family even asked that he be released from prison in 2020 due to the risk of contracting Covid-19. The Peruvian justice, however, denied the request on the grounds that Fujimori is the only detainee at the police base where he is being held in Lima, which minimizes the risks of transmission and contagion of the coronavirus.
