Former President Alberto Fujimori will stay in Peru when he is released, says his daughter Keiko

The octogenarian former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori will stay in Peru once he is released from prison, his daughter Keiko Fujimori assured on Fridaywho ruled out his father leaving for Japan, the country of his ancestors.

“He stays in Peru and we are going to pass all the exams here with the Peruvian doctors., [porque] his health is fragile,” the eldest of the four children of the former president (1990-2000) told the press after visiting him in prison.

A possible trip by Fujimori to Japan was evoked by the Lima press after the Constitutional Court (TC) hosted on Thursday a habeas corpus and ordered that he be released, restoring a humanitarian pardon granted in December 2017 and annulled ten months later.

Fujimori has Japanese nationality. In 2000, in the midst of a political crisis, he fled to Tokyo and resigned from the presidency by fax from there.. He then settled down, married a Japanese businesswoman and came to run unsuccessfully for the Japanese Senate.

“We do not know the times for his release yet, hopefully it will be today (Friday), but it could be Monday or Tuesday,” added Keiko Fujimori.

In order for him to be released, the TC has to notify the prison service, a process that takes a few days.

The opposition leader went to jail on Friday to bring clothes, food and medicine to her 83-year-old father, who has been serving a 25-year sentence since 2007..

“My father is an elderly and sick man, he has atrial fibrillation and pulmonary fibrosis”, his daughter had said on Thursday, when she recalled the health problems of the patriarch of the Fujimori clan.

“Humanely, Alberto Fujimori does not deserve to die in jail”, expressed his family doctor and Fujimorist parliamentarian, Alejandro Aguinaga.

After being extradited from Chile in 2007, Fujimori was sentenced for the massacres of Barrios Altos (fifteen dead, including a child) and La Cantuta (ten dead), perpetrated by military squads during his government in the context of the war against terrorism.

The TC made the decision by accepting a habeas corpus presented by the lawyer Gregorio Parco in 2020which sparked demonstrations in the streets of Lima for and against the measure.

Pardoned on Christmas Eve in 2017 by then President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, alleging humanitarian reasons, in October 2018 the Peruvian Justice annulled the decision and he returned to prison in January 2019. (I)