Peru’s Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the release of former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity and corruption.
The Court “restores the effects of the supreme resolution of December 24, 2017 which granted humanitarian pardon to the plaintiff, and provides for his release”, in the coming days, indicates the supreme body of justice of the country in its judgment consulted by the AFP.
The decisions of the Constitutional Court are without appeal.
The pardon, granted on Christmas Eve 2017 by then President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for humanitarian reasons, is thus restored.
In October 2018, justice had canceled this pardon and sent Mr. Fujimori back to prison in January 2019.
“Returning to prison is a slow and certain death sentence,” said Mr Fujimori, now 83 and suffering from numerous health problems, at the time.
Alberto Fujimori ruled Peru with an iron fist (1990-2000) but in the face of growing opposition he fled to Japan, where his family is from, in November 2000 and announced that he was renouncing his mandate by fax.
After being extradited from Chile in 2007, Alberto Fujimori was found guilty by the Peruvian courts of crimes against humanity for having ordered two massacres perpetrated by a death squad in 1991-1992, within the framework of the fight against Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.
Thursday, three judges voted in favor of his release and three against, but the voice of the president of the Constitutional Court is preponderant.
“The rule says that when there is a tie, the president’s vote counts double or is a casting vote,” a judicial source told AFP.
“It was a very open, very intense decision, with two radically different positions” around the question of “health reasons”, declared on RPP radio one of the six magistrates of the Court, Eloy Espinoza, who said speaking out against the release of the ex-president.
Mr. Fujimori is the only inmate of the small Barbadillo prison, located in the barracks of the police’s special operations directorate in eastern Lima, where he returned on Monday after 11 days in a clinic for treatment of heart problems .
His family repeatedly requested, without success, his release for health reasons.