Peru court reviews Fujimori's 25-year sentence
Posted: 24 November 2009 1035 hrs

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LIMA: Peru's Supreme Court on Monday opened a three-day review of former president Alberto Fujimori's 25-year prison sentence for human rights violations.

A special court sentenced the 71-year-old on April 7 after he was found guilty of authorising a secret military death squad to kill 25 people, and ordering the kidnappings of a businessman and a journalist in the early 1990s.

Fujimori, who held office between from 1990-2000, did not appear in court. Peruvian law does not require the defendant to be present in a case to appeal.

Prosecutor Pablo Sanchez said the Supreme Court should confirm the 25 year-sentence imposed on the former president. Two more days of hearings are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Fujimori's defence attorney, Cesar Nakazaki, and his team will have their turn on Tuesday, while the final day is reserved for rebuttals and counter-rebuttals.

Nakazaki filed an appeal on April 23 calling for the sentence to be overturned, and is asking the justices to either acquit the former president or order a new trial.

The hearing took place in a special courtroom inside the headquarters of the National Police special operations division, where Fujimori is imprisoned.

"Strong political pressures exist to overturn the sentence or to substantially reduce Mr. Fujimori's sentence," said Viviana Krsticevic, director of the Centre for Justice and International Law.

The group, a pro-human rights non-governmental organization, issued a joint statement along with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) calling on the justices "to guarantee the procedural fairness of the process".

The Peruvian justices "must guarantee the utmost respect for the due process rights of Fujimori, as well as ensure the impartiality and independence of the tribunal itself", the statement read.

Once the presentations are complete, the court, headed by Justice Duberli Rodriguez, has up to 30 working days to issue a ruling that cannot be appealed.

Fujimori has been found guilty in four trials since he was extradited from Chile in September 2007.

The former strongman's political downfall began in 2000 when a video of his spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos was broadcast on television, showing Fujimori's right-hand man buying off an opposition lawmaker.

Soon after, Fujimori fled to Asia and resigned via fax from a Tokyo hotel. Congress refused to accept his resignation and instead voted to sack him and ban him from public office for 10 years.

But the ex-president's political legacy appears far from extinguished. Fujimori's daughter Keiko, who enjoys her own political career, is likely to run for the Peruvian presidency in 2011 and – if successful – she has vowed to pardon her father.


- AFP/so