This Thursday the Constitutional Court of Peru (TC) ordered the release of former president Alberto Fujimori, sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses, by restoring him a pardon granted in December 2017 by the then president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, and annulled in October 2018, reported a judicial source.
“TC declared founded the demand of habeas corpus” in favor of Fujimori, 83 years old and who ruled between 1990 and 2000, which allows his release in the coming days, he told AFP the source, who asked to remain anonymous. The decisions of this court are unappealable.
After being extradited from Chile in 2007, Fujimori was sentenced for the massacres of Barrios Altos (fifteen dead, including an 8-year-old boy) and La Cantuta (ten dead), perpetrated by a military squad during his government.
The vote in the Constitutional Court, made up of six magistrates, produced a tie of three votes in favor and three against hosting the habeas corpus. But the president of the TC, Augusto Ferrero, tipped the balance in favor of Fujimori because his vote is counted as double.
“The rule says that when there is a tie, the president has a double vote or quality vote,” explained the judicial source.
Carlos Rivera, lawyer for the victims of the Barrios Altos (1991) and La Cantuta (1992) massacres, confirmed the decision.
“Unfortunately we can confirm this information, Fujimori’s freedom implies that he will have annulled at least two sentences of the Supreme Court referring to pardon,” Rivera told EFE by phone.
Fujimori is the only inmate of the small Barbadillo prison, located in the headquarters of the Directorate of Special Police Operations, in eastern Lima, to which he returned on Monday after spending eleven days in a clinic for heart problems. There he grows flowers, paints oil paintings and receives family visits.
With this decision, Fujimori will be able to leave the Barbadillo prison, located in the Lima district of Ate, where he was serving his sentence for crimes against humanity.
According to Rivera, from the Legal Defense Institute of Peru (IDL), Fujimori could be released this Thursday, something he called “nonsense.”
“What is being done is going against the express text of the judgment of the Judiciary, the Inter-American Court and the rights of the victims,” he declared.
In 2018, the Peruvian Justice ordered the annulment of the pardon after considering that it did not meet the legal requirements and lacked legal effects, for which Fujimori had to return to the prison of the police headquarters in eastern Lima where he is serving his sentence.
The pardon is even being investigated by the courts, since the Prosecutor’s Office considers that it was the product of a negotiation between Kuczynski and Fujimori’s youngest son, Kenji, who was a congressman at the time, so that Fujimorist legislators would vote against a request for impeachment. of the then president.
Fujimori was discharged last Monday after overcoming a heart condition that forced him to be admitted to a Lima clinic, although he will continue to be treated in prison for pulmonary fibrosis, according to his eldest daughter, Keiko, at the time. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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