New Hearing to be Held for Peruvian Opposition Leader

Peru’s Constitutional Court (CC) will hold a hearing Sept. 25 regarding the appeal filed by opposition leader Keiko Fujimori whose lawyers are seeking to annul the legislator’s  preventive detention that has kept her in prison since late October 2018 on allegations of corruption. 

RELATED:

Us Judge Keeps Peru Ex-President in Prison to Wife's Protest

The date was announced Friday by Constitutional Court President Ernesto Blume one day after the court reduced Fujimori’s pretrial detention from 36 to 18 months. She was hoping for an immediate release. 

Blume did announce that the judges would try to give a decision in the shortest time possible due to the case being high-profile. 

"We are going to look at [the evidence] very carefully," said Blume who rejected the circulating rumors that the court was "extremely biased" toward Fujimori and her coalition that currently holds congressional majority. 

"This affects the honor of a judge like myself who is guided by values ​​and principles based on the framework of the Constitution and the law," said the main judge in the case on Friday.

Blume denied that he tried to delay deciding on a hearing date for the case in hopes to bring in more Fujimorismo-aligned judges. 

Keiko, who leads the Popular Force party, was taken into custody in Oct. 2018 for allegedly attempting to buy witnesses in the money laundering investigation against her in the sprawling Odebrecht corruption case in Peru. She was initially being investigated for accepting around US$1 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company for her 2011 presidential campaign.

Also on Friday, one of the main state prosecutor in the Odebrecht case in Peru, Jose Domingo Perez, said there are "possible acts of infiltration of informants" in the high-profile case. 

According to a letter to his direct boss that was published Friday in local media, Perez points out that the purpose would be "to hinder and obstruct the investigation of the truth in cases of corruption and money laundering followed by the Odebrecht delation." 

He recommended the "continuous evaluation of the staff of the special team" and to "adopt procedures for identification and control of users and trial lawyers in their offices."

Perez is part of the team of investigators looking for evidence against Fujimori as well as several other elected officials, including presidents, who allegedly accepted millions from the construction company.