Fujimori, a former Peruvian president (1990-2000), is currently under house arrest in Chile. Peruvian prosecutors are demanding he be extradited to Peru, where he could face trial for numerous crimes ranging from illegal telephone tapping, to inappropriate use of state funds, to state-sponsored massacres.
Attorneys on both sides of the nearly two-year-old Alberto Fujimori extradition case delivered their closing arguments before Chile’s Supreme Court on Thursday, August 23rd, clearing the path for a final verdict in the drawn-out legal battle.
Fujimori, a former Peruvian president (1990-2000), is currently under house arrest in Chile. Peruvian prosecutors are demanding he be extradited to Peru, where he could face trial for numerous crimes ranging from illegal telephone tapping, to inappropriate use of state funds, to state-sponsored massacres.
Thursday’s proceedings, dragging on well past the Court’s normal, early-afternoon closing time, marked the end of a dramatic three-day appeals hearing. The case now goes into deliberations. The five judges responsible for the matter – Alberto Chaigneau, Nibaldo Sergura, Jaime Rodríguez, Rubén Ballesteros and Hugo Domestch – have not yet set a specific timetable for their much-anticipated decision, though lawyers involved in the case expect a resolution within the next two months.
First to speak before the Court was attorney Alfredo Etcheberry, representing the Peruvian state. Rather than separately examine each of the 12 instances of wrongdoing on which the prosecution’s case is based, Etcheberry chose instead to analyze Fujimori’s presidential track record as a whole. Offering a chronological overview of Fujimori’s time in office, Etcheberry painted the picture of a man who carefully and forcefully consolidated "absolute" power.
"Once he was chosen to be president of Peru he began accumulating for himself and for his allies what amounted to an absolute concentration of political, economic and military power," the attorney argued. "In the process of gaining that power (Fujimori) committed human rights abuses and numerous acts of corruption for his own benefit, or the benefit of his family, or the benefit of third parties that were closely tied to him."
Etcheberry described in some detail the so-called self-coup of 1992, when Fujimori suspended Peru’s constitution, shut down congress and removed many of the country’s judges, replacing them with handpicked "provisional" personnel. He also mentioned Fujimori’s use of secret police – the National Intelligence Service – to "eliminate" subversives, his manipulation of the media, and his passage, in 1995, of a general amnesty law aimed at protecting authorities from prosecution in human rights cases.
Two of the worst examples of human rights abuses committed during Fujimori’s regime were the La Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacres, committed in 1991 and 1992 respectively. In total, 25 people, including a small child and a professor, were murdered in the two massacres, which were committed by an infamous government-backed death squad known as the Colina Group.
"There’s no way that Fujimori can claim he didn’t know about these acts, or the actions (the Colina Group) carried out. Even if he didn’t order the killings, he was aware of them, and hid them," said Etcheberry.
Gabriel Zaliasnik – Fujimori’s chief defense councillor – offered a very different version of the ex-leader’s decade in power. Reminding that Court that Fujimori was thrice democratically elected, Zaliasnik related how the "constitutional president" came into power at a time when Peru was suffering an acute internal conflict. Nevertheless, state forces killed far fewer people during Fujimori’s presidency than during the previous decade, he argued. "Should (Alan) García also be brought to trial?" Zaliasnik asked the Court.
The defence attorney also took issue with the oft-repeated statement that in 2000 Fujimori "fled" Peru. "Fujimori didn’t flee Peru in 2000. Rather, authorized to do so by the congress, he went to an APEC summit and then, when the accusations against him began to surface, he stayed in Japan," Zaliasnik explained.
Overall the prosecution’s case against Fujimori "is very weak," he went on to say. Arguing that the accusations were made without a "filter," Zaliasnik complained that many of the charges against Fujimori are based on just a handful of testimonies that were made years after the alleged crimes took place.
"The evidence ought to scream out. The evidence needs to be clear, needs to be obvious. It’s not enough to have these mega suspicions," he said.
Fujimori has been in Chile since Nov. 6, 2005, when he flew to Santiago following five years of exile in Japan. Peruvian authorities originally asked that Fujimori be surrendered to them. Chile, however, opted to place the decision in the hands of its Supreme Court, following protocol set by a 1932 extradition treaty between the two countries.
In June, Supreme Court prosecutor Mónica Maldonado – in making an official recommendation on the case – found there to be enough evidence in most of the 12 cases originally presented against Fujimori to warrant extradition. Exactly one month later, however, the Supreme Court made a complete about-face. On July 11 Judge Orlando Álvarez dismissed all 12 cases, ruling soundly that Fujimori not be extradited.
Contact Benjamin Witte (benwitte@hotmail.com)