Peru to ask Chile to extend Alberto Fujimori’s extradition authorization to include new charges

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Peruvian government will ask the Chilean courts to extend the extradition authorization against former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) to include his trial for the illegal sale of arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces Colombia (FARC) in 1999.

This was announced this Wednesday by the Prime Minister, Guido Bellido, after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, where, at the request of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, this resolution was approved. It will be sent to the Chilean authorities for its evaluation.

For this illegal arms sale, Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori’s super advisor, was sentenced in 2006 to 20 years in prison. Montesinos acquired a shipment of 10,000 AK-47 rifles in Jordan with the help of arms traffickers and then resold them to the FARC.

Bellido, charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for allegedly advocating terrorism and alleged money laundering in financing his electoral campaign for Congress, recalled that these weapons reached “terrorist groups when former president Fujimori was in office”.

The weapons were dropped over the Colombian jungle in airplanes that dropped the illegal merchandise with parachutes at previously coordinated with the FARC.

SEVERAL CONVICTIONS

Fujimori, 83, is serving a 25-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity, although, since his extradition from Chile, he has also been sentenced for various corruption cases.

After resigning by fax sent from Japan in 2000 following the discovery of the gigantic corruption network that had been set up in the public administration during his mandate, Fujimori was captured in 2005 in Chile, when he was about to try to return to Peru for the presidential elections of the following year.

In 2007 he was extradited to Peru to face charges, and in 2009, he received the main sentence of 25 years in prison for being the perpetrator by proxy (with control of the act) of the murder of 25 people in the Barrios Altos (1991) and La Cantuta (1992) massacres, perpetrated by the Colina undercover military group.

The kidnappings of businessman Samuel Dyer and journalist Gustavo Gorriti, the latter during Fujimori’s “self-coup” on April 5, 1992, allowed him to shut down Parliament, draft a new Constitution, and control the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary.

BRIBES TO OPPONENTS

Fujimori was also convicted for bribing opposition members of Congress and journalists, espionage, and ordering a military officer to pose as a prosecutor to search the home of Montesinos’ wife.

He is currently being prosecuted for the Pativilca massacre, also committed by the Colina group, and accused of forced sterilizations committed during his term in office, a case whose opening of trial is being evaluated by the courts.

After the pardon given to him by former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2017 was annulled due to irregularities in the process, Fujimori still has approximately a dozen years left to serve in prison, so he would not be released until 2033 when he would be 94 years old.