• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
News > Latin America

Peru: Human Rights Lawyers Plan to Revoke Fujimori Pardon

  • People holding pictures of victims of the conflict in the 1980s and 1990s march after Peruvian President Kuczynski pardoned former President Alberto Fujimori.

    People holding pictures of victims of the conflict in the 1980s and 1990s march after Peruvian President Kuczynski pardoned former President Alberto Fujimori. | Photo: Reuters

Published 27 December 2017
Opinion

“The pardon does not conform with the Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling,” says Francisco Soberon, director of the Pro-Human Rights Association.

Human rights lawyers in Lima, Peru have announced that they will seek to overturn former President Alberto Fujimori’s recent medical pardon.

RELATED: 
PPK's Pardon of Fujimori Sparks Protests in Peru

“The pardon does not conform with the Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling,” said Francisco Soberon, director of the Pro-Human Rights Association.

Soberon said the Inter-American Human Rights Court, IAHRC, which tried and convicted Fujimori on two charges of human rights violations, does not permit pardons and sentence reductions on their rulings.

Fujimori orchestrated the killings of 25 people by an army squad. He was also found guilty of kidnapping journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer and directing the killings of nine students and one professor from the Enrique Guzman and Valle National University.

TeleSUR correspondent in Lima Jaime Herrera reported that the families of these university victims are planning a legal strategy to revoke the pardon.

The pardon allowed Fujimori to leave prison and to be moved to a Lima hospital. Fujimori was first imprisoned in 2007 for a six-year sentence for abuse of power. In 2009, he was sentenced to 25 years for crimes against humanity.

Herrera also reported that social organizations, political leaders and unions are meeting Wednesday to organize a national strike to protest the pardon.

Along with former Army Captain Vladimir Montesinos, Fujimori has been linked to forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the war against insurgent groups Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. Fujimori was also accused of forced sterilizations affecting 300,000 women between 1996 and 2000.

Fujimori was president between 1990 and 2000. His most notable political rights violation was his 1992 "self-coup." This political move allowed the president to dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court, consolidating his power under an authoritarian regime.

On Dec. 24, Peru’s current president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, granted Fujimori a "humanitarian pardon" for medical reasons, adding that the sentence was "excessive" for the convicted crimes.

The former president has low blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat. Doctors who recently examined him said, “Fujimori suffers from a progressive, degenerative and incurable illness and ... prison conditions represent a grave risk to his life."

RELATED: 
Kuczynski: Fujimori's Crimes 'Excesses and Mistakes'

Since Kuczynski announced the pardon three days ago, more than 5,000 Peruvians have taken to the streets of Lima to protest against the pardon and "impunity." Some demonstrators were met with police violence as they neared Kuczynski's house.

Kuczynski’s pardon comes just after Congress narrowly voted to not impeach the president for receiving nearly US$800,000 in kickbacks from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. The failed impeachment was seen as a political maneuver by Fujimori’s son, Kenji, to salvage Kuczynski from impeachment so the president could pardon his father as a reward.

Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.