From Lima
Two days after an emergency measure by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights stopped the release of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, ordered by the Constitutional Court (TC), this Friday the international court heard, in a virtual hearing, the victims of the dictatorship fujimorista, who demand that the judgment of the TC be annulled. A few days ago the TC revived a pardon in favor of Fujimori, convicted of crimes against humanity, which had been annulled more than three years ago. That triggered a scandal and protests in the streets. The relatives of the victims asked the Court to take provisional measures to protect their right to justice until this court issues a final ruling on the lawsuit to annul the ruling of the TC that seeks to enshrine impunity for Fujimori.
The urgent measure taken by the Court to prevent the release of Fujimori, indicating that with this it seeks to “guarantee the right of access to justice for the victims of the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta cases”, is a preview of where they could go those interim measures. It is for these two cases that Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In November 1991, fifteen people, including an eight-year-old boy, were gunned down by an army detachment that entered a modest home in Barrios Altos, in the center of Lima, where they had gathered for a party. In July 1992, the same military detachment, known as the Colina group, kidnapped and murdered nine students and a professor from La Cantuta University. The Colina group operated as a death squad under the protection of Fujimori.
The lawyers of the victims of Fujimorism pointed out before the Court that with the restitution of the pardon to the former dictator there is “a serious danger of irreparable damage to the right to justice of the victims”, for which the suspension of the execution of the sentence should be confirmed. ruling of the TC ordering the release of Fujimori until his request to definitively annul that pardon is resolved. They recalled that the pardon, which was granted in December 2017 by former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was part of a political exchange of Fujimori votes in Congress in exchange for impunity for the former dictator and that the Peruvian Supreme Court annulled it in October 2018. because it is considered illegal. They indicated that this ruling of the TC does not have any solid argumentation and violates national and international jurisprudence on human rights. The representative of the Peruvian State supported the request of the victims. Pedro Castillo’s government has rejected the ruling of the TC in favor of Fujimori.
“With Fujimori’s sentence we feel that some justice had been done, this undue pardon violates our right to truth and justice. We still have missing relatives. The hope that justice will be done falls on this court”, was the plea before the magistrates of the Court of Gisela Ortiz, sister of one of the murdered students of La Cantuta. She was accompanied by other relatives of victims who held up posters with photos of the disappeared and murdered. Ortiz was Minister of Culture for a short period in the Castillo government.
Before April 8, when its current session ends, the Court will issue a decision on the provisional measures requested. Meanwhile, his decision to stop Fujimori’s release remains in force. Then this court will make a decision on the substantive issue: the validity or not of the ruling that restores the disputed pardon to Fujimori. Due to the jurisprudence on the matter, the clear irregularities in the pardon in question that was annulled and in the judgment of the TC that reinstates it, and due to the position that the Court has already taken on this issue, the families of the victims trust that the The final ruling of this international court definitively annuls Fujimori’s pardon and impunity is not consecrated.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has described the ruling of the TC in favor of Fujimori as “extremely serious” and a fact that “affects the international community as a whole.” The IACHR reminded the Court that Fujimori is convicted of crimes against humanity, for which he is not entitled to receive a pardon. International human rights organizations and organizations from different countries, including Argentina, have expressed themselves in the same sense. Jurist Diego García Sayán, former president of the Court, has stated that restitution of Fujimori’s pardon “collides with legality and with international law.”
In his comfortable VIP prison in a Lima police station, where he is the only inmate, Fujimori was preparing to be released Wednesday. The bureaucratic procedures to execute the ruling of the TC that favored it were finished. They had assured him that his release would be a matter of hours, that if it did not happen that same Wednesday, it would happen on Thursday. He had everything ready to leave the exclusive prison in which he has been confined since 2007. But at the last moment everything changed when on Wednesday afternoon the communication from the Court arrived requiring the Peruvian State to stop the process of releasing the former dictator. . The government complied with the decision of the international court and Fujimori remained in prison.
Keiko Fujimori reacted by accusing the Court of having an “ideological bias”. The autocrat’s daughter, current head of Fujimori and three times defeated presidential candidate, complained that not releasing her father, convicted of crimes against humanity, was a violation of her human rights. For the victims of her father’s dictatorship who demand justice, she did not have a single word. She demanded that the Peruvian State disobey the Court’s decision, which would go against the intentional obligations of the country. Dramatizing, she ended her brief recorded message of her saying that she held the government responsible if her father’s health was affected after learning that he would not be released.
Dramatizing the health of Fujimori, 83, to press for his freedom has been a constant since he was imprisoned. Years ago his imminent death was announced if he is not released. According to his doctors, the former dictator suffers from ailments such as hypertension, atrial fibrillation and pulmonary fibrosis, but there is no medical evaluation that has determined that his state of health is serious. In the VIP prison where he is, he has permanent medical care and an ambulance at his exclusive disposal.
In addition to the sentences he already has, Fujimori has been prosecuted for the massacre of six peasants in 1992 committed by the Colina group, and another trial is pending for the forced sterilization of more than 300,000 women, the vast majority of whom are peasants. The fate of the former dictator, who at least for now will no longer be released, is in the hands of the Court. The triumph of impunity that Fujimorism celebrated a few days ago is being reversed.