Peru’s Supreme Court orders Fujimori’s release from prison
Peru’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the release of former President Alberto Fujimori from prison where he is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses. In doing so, he has defied an order from an international court that the South American country keep him behind bars.
The court, the Constitutional Tribunal of Peru, voted 3 to 1 to reaffirm its decision to grant a presidential pardon granted to Mr. Fujimori in 2017; the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had ruled that the pardon violated the rights of his victims.
Mr Fujimori’s lawyer told reporters that the former president would most likely be released from prison on Wednesday.
Some experts on Tuesday called the Peruvian Supreme Court’s decision an example of institutional decay in a country that has suffered successive political crises in recent years.
“Until now we had not seen this attitude of the Peruvian state of open resistance, basically saying that it is no problem if we do not fulfill our international obligations,” said Pedro Grández, an expert on Peruvian constitutional law .
Ahead of the court’s ruling, the Inter-American Court reiterated its decision that Mr. Fujimori should not be released under the 2017 pardon. But the center-right government of President Dina Boluarte is expected to abide by the Peruvian court’s ruling to hold.
In its ruling, the Constitutional Tribunal said that if the international court believes Peru is in violation of its international obligations, it must refer the case to the Organization of American States, the regional body of which the Inter-American Court is part.
“The body that decides is the Constitutional Court,” right-wing lawmaker José Cueto said after the ruling. “The Inter-American Court of Human Rights can say what it wants and do what it thinks is appropriate, but we don’t have to listen to it,” he added.
The decision was the latest development in the rollercoaster of Mr Fujimori’s imprisonment, and came amid a wave of political scandals and concerns about impunity in the country of 33 million.
Mr. Fujimori, who was elected 30 years ago as an anti-establishment outsider, came to power as hyperinflation ravaged Peru’s economy and left-wing rebel groups waged terror campaigns that killed tens of thousands of people.
Two years after his election, Mr. Fujimori dissolved Congress with the support of the military, suspended the constitution and began ruling as a dictator.
His tenure was marked by a brutal government counterinsurgency campaign against left-wing guerrillas. Dozens of civilians were subjected to extrajudicial killings by death squads that prosecutors say Mr. Fujimori created. He abruptly resigned by fax from his parents’ home country of Japan in 2000 after videos were made public showing the country’s spymaster paying bribes.
Mr. Fujimori was convicted in 2009 of human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity under international law in connection with the extrajudicial killings and kidnappings. He was sentenced by a Peruvian court to more than twenty years in prison and served sixteen years.
Mr. Fujimori’s family says he has pulmonary fibrosis, a terminal illness. Now 85, he is being held in a special prison for Peruvian presidents in Lima, along with two other former presidents, Mr. Castillo and Alejandro Toledo. Mr. Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko Fujimori, is an influential opposition leader who narrowly lost last year’s presidential election to Mr. Castillo, as well as two previous presidential elections.
In 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Mr. Fujimori ahead of an impeachment vote that Mr. Kuczynski survived with the support of Mr. Fujimori’s supporters in Congress. The pardon was annulled the following year and Mr. Fujimori was sent back to prison. In 2022, the Constitutional Tribunal reinstated the pardon, but the Inter-American Court ruled against it before Mr. Fujimori could be released. The Peruvian tribunal now claims that the court had no jurisdiction to make that decision.
After the decision, television stations showed a group of Mr. Fujimori’s supporters celebrating outside the prison.
“He is very calm, enthusiastic and clinically stable,” Mr Fujimori’s lawyer, Elio Riera, told reporters after speaking to him. “He is very hopeful about the implementation of this order.”
Carlos Rivera, a lawyer representing the victims of the massacres of which Mr. Fujimori was found guilty, said the tribunal’s position was moving the country toward “a scenario of non-compliance with the verdicts of an international body.”
Dino Carlos Caro, professor of law at the University of Salamanca, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Why the fear of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights? The Court plays a fundamental role in protecting human rights, but like any body or power, it has its limits.”
In 2018, the international court outlined a route for Mr. Fujimori to seek a pardon that would be consistent with international law: it required him to publicly apologize to his victims and make civil reparations.
“While the court opened the door to a new legal pardon, Fujimori and his defense and family never wanted to move on,” Rivera said.