Peru's top prosecutor said witnesses will show former president Alberto Fujimori directed a "dirty war" against leftist insurgents during his 1990-2000 rule when he goes on trial this month. Prosecutor Jose Pelaez is seeking a 30-year prison sentence for Fujimori, who faces kidnapping and murder charges when his trial begins November 26.
The Peruvian ex-leader faces a separate trial on abuse of power, corruption and embezzlement charges. "Fujimori believed that terrorism had to be fought with the same weapons the terrorists used, as an unconventional and clandestine war ... what is known as a 'dirty war'," Pelaez told AFP on Wednesday.
The murder charges the ex-strongman faces include the slaying of 25 civilians in 1991 and 1992 during raids by the Colina Group, a paramilitary hit squad. At the time Peru was fighting the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas. Both groups were crushed during Fujimori's presidency.
Pelaez said the Colina Group was organised with Fujimori's full knowledge, despite the claims of his defence. "He may not have known that they were going to kill this or that person, but he did know of all the operations they were carrying out under the unconventional war strategy," Pelaez told AFP.
Fujimori's top adviser, Vladimiro Montesinos, "was the second in the chain of command within this secret group," Pelaez said. General Nicolas Hermoza, at the time the head of Peru's military, also knnew of the squad, Pelaez said Several former Colina Group operatives are collaborating with prosecutors, while Montesinos - in jail on corruption charges - is one of the 46 witnesses called to testify against the ex-president.
Pelaez filed charges against Fujimori at the Supreme Court's special criminal court on Monday. He also asked that the ex-president pay 33 million dollars in damages to the families of the murder victims, as well as two further payments of 99,300 dollars each for his role in two Colina Group kidnappings.
Pelaez said that statements Montesinos gave earlier to Congress and in recorded interviews clearly link Fujimori to the Colina Group. Fujimori's attorney Cesar Nakazaki said that he may ask for a delay for extra time to work on the defence. "We are going to show that Alberto Fujimori is innocent," said the ex-president's daughter Keiko.
Keiko Fujimori became Peru's first lady at the tender age of 21 when her father divorced her mother, Susana Higuchi, in mid-1994. In 2006 Keiko ran for Congress and was elected with the highest number of votes of any candidate. "I believe it is absurd that the person who defeated terrorism is today in the seat of the accused," Keiko Fujimori told reporters Tuesday.
In late October she told a Chilean newspaper that she hopes her father will run for president again in 2011 - but if not, she will. Higuchi, 57, is also a member of Peru's Congress. Fujimori's 10-year presidency ended with a massive corruption scandal soon after he was re-elected to a questionable third term in 2000. He travelled to Asia, resigned via fax from a Tokyo hotel, and obtained Japanese citizenship to avoid Peruvian prosecutors.
Sensing a comeback opportunity, Fujimori flew to Chile in late 2005 hoping to run in Peru's presidential election the following year. Chilean authorities detained him, and extradited him to Peru in September to face trial.
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