Peru court backs sentence on Fujimore

Peru’s supreme court has ratified the 25-year jail sentence handed to Alberto Fujimori, the country’s former president, over a number of killings and kidnappings during his time in power.

The court published its decision to uphold the jail term in a ruling posted on the internet on Sunday.

Seventy-one-year-old Fujimori’s defence lawyer had asked the court to revoke his client’s sentence, claiming that the evidence against him was not strong enough to prove his involvement.

“None of the 10 pieces of evidence that went to determine his guilt as mastermind of premeditated murder have to do with the issue of him giving the order for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta” Cesar Nakazaki had argued.

Massacres

The case related to two massacres, the first committed on November 3, 1991 when a group of masked soldiers burst into a party in the Lima suburb of Barrios Altos, killing 15 people, including an eight-year-old boy.

Several months later, nine La Cantuta university students and their professor were rounded up by the same “La Colina” squad, taken to a deserted area of the city and executed with shots to the back of their heads.

The lawyer also asked for an annulment of Fujimori’s conviction in the kidnapping of a journalist and a businessman, both critics of his government, in 1992, also because he claimed there was not enough evidence to prove that the former president had ordered the abductions.

Given Fujimori’s age and ill-health, the 25-year sentence would likely mean the former president would spend the rest of his life in prison.

However, his daughter Keiko Fujimori has vowed to pardon him if she is sucessful in her bid for the presidency in 2011.

Fujimori’s political downfall began in 2000 when a video of Vladimiro Montesinos, his security chief, was broadcast on television, showing him buying off an opposition politician.