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LIMA : Peru's prime minister testified Friday in the rights abuse trial of Alberto Fujimori that the former president ordered his kidnapping on the night of a military-supported "self-coup" in April 1992.
Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo was mayor of Lima during part of President Alan Garcia's 1985-1990 administration, and a leading legislator at the time of his detention.
Prosecutors want to show that Fujimori, president between 1990-2000, was informed about arrests carried out April 5, 1992, when he shut down Congress and the courts in an authoritarian power-grab that became known as a self-coup.
Fujimori, 69, said the measures were needed to fight the out-of-control violence by the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement leftist guerrillas.
The former president is on trial for allegedly authorizing two army death squad massacres in 1991 and 1992 that left 25 people dead. He has also been charged with kidnapping.
Soldiers who came to arrest Garcia at his home on the night of the coup instead found del Castillo, who was making time for Garcia to flee to safety over the rooftops.
Garcia, re-elected in 2006, later recounted that he hid in an empty rooftop water tank before taking asylum in Colombia and later France.
In his testimony del Castillo referred to a document signed by General Nicolas Hermoza, the top military commander at the time, stating that the arrests were carried out "on orders from above."
"The 'orders from above' upon which ... Hermoza acted on and ordered our arrest on must have been those of the accused," del Castillo said, referring to Fujimori.
"It was a kidnapping. They never told me why I was being arrested over those five days I was held in military installations," said del Castillo.
"I was captured when I was at the home of then ex-president Garcia, who escaped over the rooftops and who the (military and police) wanted to assassinate," del Castillo added.
Garcia claimed in a book that he had been tipped off by a good source that Fujimori wanted him dead.
Hermoza himself confirmed the authenticity of the written order during an earlier trial against him, del Castillo said. Hermoza was sentenced in 2005 to eight years in prison on corruption charges.
Under questioning, however, del Castillo said he has no direct proof that Fujimori gave the orders, and that after he was roughed-up during the arrest he was not interrogated and was given medical attention.
In a brief reply Fujimori denied the accusation. "I never issued orders to attempt against the life of president Alan Garcia and his family during the April 5, 1992 self-coup," he said.
Fujimori said that he always lamented acts of violence against citizens "like those expressed here" in this trial.
"In 1992 I had to take a decision," Fujimori said. "Either we continued along the same path or we took a risk by taking an unknown turn ... I took the political decision in favor of a self-coup, which I considered traumatic for Peruvians, but the safest measure."
The self-coup was a popular move at the time. Fujimori supporters later re-wrote the constitution. He was re-elected in 1995 and, in controversial elections, again in 2000.
Fujimori's defense team is trying to show that the former president set rules to respect human rights during his presidency, and knew nothing of the Colina Group, a team of select army intelligence operatives behind the 1991 and 1992 massacres.
The prosecution seeks to show that the ex-president knew about and sanctioned the group.
The Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement were crushed during Fujimori's presidency, though a handful of Shining Path fighters remain active in the Peruvian jungle.
- AFP/ir
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