Former President Fujimori, 70, has been found guilty of human rights violations by the Peruvian Courts. According to the BBC:
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been found guilty of ordering death-squad killings and kidnappings in the 1990s.
The court sentenced Fujimori to 25 years in prison.
For background on Peru’s human rights situation and the violence perpetrated by the Peruvian government under Fujimori’s rule, see of Peru Section of Memory In Latin America. For continuing updates on the case in Spanish and English, see Fujimori on Trial/Fujimori Procesado.
This is the second time that a Latin American nation’s courts try and convict a former head of state for gross human rights abuses. Argentina set the precedent by trying, convicting, and jailing all four heads of state that governed during Argentina’s military regime that ruled from 1976 to 1983–Jorge Rafael Videla, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, and Reynaldo Bignone–on charges of torture, abduction of children, and assassination. Carlos Menem later pardoned all four them, but new charges were brought forth and convictions secured during subsequent administrations.
Update: Fujimori’s conviction comes as the the United States continues to debate its own policies toward torture. On April 9, the New York Review of Books published Mark Danner’s exposé of acts of torture committed during the Bush Administration, based on a reading of the unpublished International Committee of the Red Cross Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody.
Image of newspapers announcing Fujimori’s conviction: : Pedro Rivas Ugaz
