Peru's Fujimori found guilty of human rights violation

[leggy leftist]

This one is from PressTV but it's on all the major sites:


A Peru court declares guilty ex-President Alberto Fujimori on human rights charges including murder and kidnapping during his tenure in 1990s.

Following 15-month of trial Fujimori, 70, was found guilty of murder, bodily harm and two cases of kidnapping.

"The charges have been proved beyond all reasonable doubt," chief judge Cesar San Martin said. "Thus the verdict is a conviction," he said, according to AFP.

Rejecting the charges Fujimori said he had never created a paramilitary death squad rather he had been a wartime president fighting to protect his people. "The Peru that I inherited was a disaster. It was a Peru that had to be rescued," he said in his closing statements.

But the Judge noted that it was clear Fujimori authorized the creation of the death squad that killed dozens of people.

"This court declares that the four charges against him have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt," San Martin said.

Rights groups welcomed the outcome.

"Fujimori is finally being held to account for some of his crimes," Maria McFarland, a researcher for the US-based Human Rights Watch who was present in the courtroom, said in a statement.

"The Peruvian court has shown the world that even former heads of state cannot expect to get away with serious crimes," she said.

He is the first democratically elected former president to be tried for rights violations in his own country.

The judges are expected later in the day to announce Fujimori's sentence, which could reach up to 30 years in prison.

[Charles Xavier]

Good, but Garcia is just as guilty.


Fujimori did a lot more than just this though.

[Saorsa]

The PCP came *this* close to toppling that fucker. If only...

[Random Precision]

I hear he's being held in the same prison as Presidente Gonzalo. Maybe they could be cellmates and talk about the good old days. :laugh:

But this will be overturned if Fujimori's daughter is elected president, she's said that she would pardon him as her first act in office.

[AvanteRedGarde]

About time. The way Fujimori was a jet-set national hero in Japan was utterly disgusting. Though this pig deserves far worst; at least some justice was done.

Tupac is right, Garcia is just as guilty.

Here is a Monkey Smashes Heaven article which comes to the same conclusion:




Fujimori guilty, gets 25 years
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)


Ex-dictator of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, today, received a sentence of 25 years in prison. Fujimori was found to have authorized the actions of the infamous La Colina death squad that claimed the lives of 25 people in 1991 and 1992. In addition, Fujimori was found guilty of authorizing the abduction of a journalist and a businessman. (1) In reality, Fujimori is responsible for far more deaths than the 25 he is accused of. Over 60,000 people are officially estimated to have been killed or “disappeared” in the Peruvian state’s genocidal war against the countryside of Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. Fujimori, working closely with U$ intelligence, military, and narcotics agencies, enforced a bloody terrorist state on the Peruvian people.


The Garcia regime, in laying the blame on Fujimori, no doubt, seeks to exonerate itself from any wrong doing. In fact, the people’s war was launched when the Garcia regime was in power. And, the Garcia regime has plenty of blood on its hands. It was during Alan Garcia’s presidency that the newspaper El Diario’s offices were bombed. According to a declassified U$ document, Garcia was behind the attack. El Diario was sympathetic to the people’s war. In addition, Garcia maintained a secret police that carried out extra-judicial executions. (2)


The Garcia regime trying Fujimori no more cares about the Peruvian people than Fujimori. Not only is Garcia using the trial of Fujimori to distract eyes from Garcia’s own role. But, also, the bourgeois forces in Peru are getting their revenge on Fujimori for his “selfcoup” in March 1992, when Fujimori, with the aid of the military, disbanded Peru’s congress led by Garcia’s APRA, hence, Fujimori became out-and-out dictator.


“What difference is there? Why are Alan Garcia and Fernando Belaunde innocent and Alberto Fujimori guilty? Why the double standard?” asked Fujimori. (3)


They aren’t. The Peruvian people deserve true justice, not the farce of political infighting of the bourgeois. Fujimori, Garcia, and, mass murder and public enemy number 1, Uncle Sam should all meet their fate at the hands of the masses of the world.



Notes.
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7986951.stm
2. http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/12/05/peru-us-govt-document-links-garcia-to-1980s-death-squads/
3. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N03337545.htm

[AvanteRedGarde]

But this will be overturned if Fujimori's daughter is elected president, she's said that she would pardon him as her first act in office.

She's another disgusting piece of trash. Eulogizing her dictator father from American ivy league schools.

[MarxSchmarx]

It's funny b/c I had a bona fide leftist friend who felt Fujimori was playing a dangerous balancing act btw the shining path and the oligarchy, trying to set out a 3rd way against the Peruvian oligarchy and neoliberalism. The legacy of this is he has a lot of poor people who side with his daughter, because they believe he was an "acceptable" alternative to the Shining Path. Of course she is nothing of the kind, but recent Peruvian politicians have utterly failed to grapple with his legacy viz. the poor. So they have built this vacuum in which an opportunist like Keiko can emerge.

This has resulted in a tragic situation where there are no decent, credible alternatives for the people of Peru right now within the electoral realm. Fujimori's shadow runs deep, and it will take a long time for a populist outside the oligarchy to regain his credibilty.

[Revy]

Wiki says that Keiko is leading in the presidential polls. Scary!
looks like it will be between her and Ollanta Humala (a "nationalist").

Mass sterilizations of indigenous women during the Fujimori era. (http://vivirlatino.com/2009/04/16/add-this-to-fujimoris-crimes-mass-sterilizations.php)