Fujimori extradition decision expected on Friday
Posted: 21 September 2007 1019 hrs

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SANTIAGO: Chile's Supreme Court is expected on Friday to deliver its highly anticipated decision on whether to extradite former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori to Peru, where he faces corruption and human rights abuse charges.

A ruling in Peru's favour would send Fujimori, 69, back to his home country to face a series of charges seven years after he fled to Japan and resigned amid a corruption scandal that roiled his government.

Fujimori was arrested after arriving unexpectedly in Santiago in November 2005 in an apparent bid to make a political comeback in Peru. He was granted conditional release in May 2006, but was placed under house arrest last June.

Peru, which was unable to convince Japan to extradite the dual Peruvian-Japanese national, requested his extradition from Chile shortly after his arrival here.

Lima's effort to try him for crimes committed during his 1990-2000 regime was dealt a setback in July when a Chilean judge rejected its extradition request, forcing Peru to take its case to the high court.

Chilean Supreme Court spokesman Cristian Fuenzalida announced on Thursday that the five-judge panel will disclose its ruling, which cannot be appealed, on Friday.

But Alberto Chaigneau, the chief justice of the Supreme Court's Second Chamber reviewing the case, left the door open for a delay.

"I want it (the decision) to come out" Friday, he said. "We are working on that, but you must understand that 25,000 pages of legal documents are not easy to review."

The Second Chamber's judges already voiced their positions on the case behind closed doors on September 10, but their decision has been kept it secret until it is put on paper and signed by all five justices.

If the court rules in favour of extradition, his return to Peru could take as little as one day and as long as three months.

Fujimori, who is under house arrest in Santiago, faces two charges of human rights abuses and 10 counts of corruption.

He has been accused of responsibility for atrocities carried out by military death squads, including the 1992 massacre of nine students at Cantuta University and the 1991 killing of 15 people in Lima's Barrios Altos neighbourhood.

His daughter, Keiko Fujimori, who is a member of Peru's Congress, said she did not believe her father would get a fair trial.

"I have always said that even if he wins the extradition process, I hope he doesn't return to Peru until the conditions changes and he can get a fair process to defend himself against the charges," she said.

Human Rights Watch representative Jose Miguel Vivanco said Fujimori would face a different judicial system than the one that existed under his rule.

"Today Peruvian judicial authorities have recovered a level of independence and autonomy that they did not have during the Fujimori regime," he told AFP. "I think Fujimori is guaranteed to have due process in Peru."

His extradition would likely cause a political storm in Peru as he still enjoys support in the country's unicameral Congress, where 13 of the 120 lawmakers are in his camp.

Fujimori rose from obscurity as a little-known economist to capture the presidency in 1990, defeating renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who had been heavily favoured in opinion polls.

While president, he was criticized for using heavy-handed methods to crush the Shining Path guerrilla group, although one of his crowning achievements was the arrest of the Maoist movement's leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1992.

Fujimori, who was born to Japanese immigrants in Peru, fled to Japan in 2000 amid a corruption probe and sent his resignation by fax from a Tokyo hotel.

He spent five years in exile in Japan, which granted him citizenship and refused extradition requests from Peru.

While under house arrest in Santiago, Fujimori even made a brazen attempt to be elected in Japan's parliament, a candidacy that critics in Peru saw as another bid to avoid prosecution. But he failed to win in the July election.


- AFP/so