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Amnesty Urges Japan to Return Fujimori to Peru
Japan should either turn over former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to Lima for trial on human rights abuses or begin its own independent investigations, human rights group Amnesty International said on Friday.
"The widespread and systematic human rights violations committed in Peru during Alberto Fujimori's presidency amount to crimes against humanity, over which any state has the ability to exercise universal jurisdiction," Amnesty said in a statement.
Fujimori, who ruled Peru with an iron fist for a decade from 1990, has been charged with responsibility for human rights violations. He denies any wrongdoing.
Fujimori fled to Japan last November at the height of a corruption scandal sparked by his influential top aide, Vladimiro Montesinos, and was fired for being "morally unfit."
In September, Peru issued an international arrest order for Fujimori on charges of violating human rights and passed the warrant to international police agency, Interpol.
President Alejandro Toledo's government, which took office in July, has not made a formal extradition request to Tokyo, but insists that Fujimori would receive a fair trial in Lima.
Toledo met Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi last weekend on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in China and asked him to hand over Fujimori.
Japan has maintained it will not extradite Fujimori because of his dual Japanese-Peruvian citizenship.
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