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Peru's Congress Likely to Clear the Way for Homicide Charges Against Fujimori
Disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori faced the likelihood Monday that Congress would clear the way for charges that he committed crimes against humanity in connection with two state-sponsored massacres in the early 1990s.
In a special session Monday night, Congress initiated a debate on an investigative committee's recommendation that Fujimori's constitutional immunity be lifted so that prosecutors could charge him with homicide and forced disappearances committed by a paramilitary death squad.
The "constitutional accusation" was expected to be approved overwhelmingly by Congress. Fujimori's party, which once controlled the legislature, now has only three seats in the 120-member body.
Congressman Daniel Estrada, head of the investigative committee, told Congress that evidence collected by his group showed clearly that the death-squad killings were part of the Fujimori government's strategy to battle leftist guerrillas.
The massacres "could not have occurred without the consent of the highest spheres of power," Estrada said, in defending his committee's recommendation.
Peruvian officials argue that forced disappearances and politically motivated killings against groups of people qualify as "crimes against humanity," charges that require trial under international treaties on human rights violations.
Peruvian legal experts hope such new charges could force Japan, where Fujimori fled last fall, to extradite him. But since Japanese law bars Japan from sending Fujimori to Peru, the experts believe Japan would at least have to try him in its courts because it has signed international human rights treaties.
Fujimori, 63, was granted citizenship by Japan, his parents' homeland. At the time, corruption scandals involving his ex-intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos had brought down his 10-year government.
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