Back in Peru to face charges, Fujimori maintains innocence

LIMA, Peru — Former President Alberto Fujimori returned to Peru on Saturday under heavy guard on a police airplane, after an extradition order from Chile. He was immediately incarcerated at a police base as dozens of his supporters blocked traffic in protest.

Chile's Supreme Court on Friday sent Fujimori home to face charges that he organized a death squad that killed 25 people, bribed congressmen and journalists to gain their support, kidnapped critics of his regime and bought the silence of Vladimiro Montesinos, his chief political and military adviser, with $15 million of taxpayer money.

The man who ruled Peru with an iron fist for 10 years beginning in 1990 is facing a potential 30-year sentence in prison.

Fujimori left Peru in 2000 for a routine Asian summit and then shocked the nation by faxing in his resignation from Japan, as scandals began to envelop his government.

Fujimori remained in Japan until he made a surprise trip two years ago to Chile, where he was promptly put under house arrest at the request of Peruvian authorities. Since then, he has been trying to avoid being extradited to Peru.

On Friday, Fujimori told an interviewer that he had gone to Chile to reduce the number of charges he would face in his eventual return to Peru. Once several dozen, that number of charges has now been reduced to the seven charges approved by the Chilean Supreme Court.

In the interview, Fujimori said he was innocent of all charges and said that any misdeeds were committed by Montesinos without his knowledge.

In a country with a suspect judiciary, it's unclear how the courts will rule on the seven pending charges. But legal experts agreed on Saturday that his prospects look dim.

Diego Sayan, who as justice minister in 2000 began the extradition proceedings against Fujimori, noted that the Chilean Supreme Court voted unanimously to extradite the former president on the two most serious charges, that he sanctioned the Colina Group to kill 15 ordinary citizens enjoying a chicken barbecue — a case known as Barrios Altos — and to kidnap and murder one professor and nine university students in a case known as La Cantuta.

"Fujimori suffered a serious legal defeat," Sayan said. "He was hoping that he wouldn't be extradited or if so, it would only be on lesser charges."

The Barrios Altos and La Cantuta cases each carry a 30-year sentence, while the various corruption and abuse-of-authority charges carry shorter terms. Sentences on multiple charges are served concurrently in Peru, so 30 years is the maximum he could face.

Fujimori is expected to spend two weeks at the police training base. He will then be transferred to a more traditional high-security prison.

It could take months and even years for the Peruvian courts to hear Fujimori's cases.

In the meantime, he remains a hero to about 20 percent of adult Peruvians, said Manuel Torrado, a Lima-based pollster. His political party won 13 of the 120 seats in Congress last year.

"He has a strong core of support among poor people who remember a road he built, a school that he built, who received milk from his government, who have running water thanks to him, who say that he was the only politician who ever did anything for them," Torrado said.

But about 60 percent of Peruvians reject Fujimori, Torrado added, because they believe he's corrupt and that he illegally repressed his opponents. Fujimori lost further support when he ran for the Japanese Senate from Chile earlier this year and lost badly.

At 69 and with the next presidential election in 2011, Fujimori's political future in Peru seems over. "The chances he could be elected again are nil," Torrado said.

His daughter Keiko, however, was elected to Congress last year with 600,000 votes, far more than any other legislator.