(CNN Spanish) – The former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori died this Wednesday at the age of 86, his daughter Keiko Fujimori reported in a message published on the X account.
Born on July 28, 1938, Alberto Fujimori was dedicated to university life when he first ran for president in 1990.
The surprise was great when the son of Japanese immigrants, and inexperienced in politics, defeated the famous writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who led a front of traditional right-wing parties, in a second electoral round.
It was up to him to govern a country bled by terrorism and suffocated by hyperinflation. Situation to which he referred during the trial against him for violation of human rights and corruption.
“I had to rule from hell. Not from the palace, but from a hell, that those who accuse me did not live as I did. I only hope that those who sentence me try for a moment to imagine that hell and not try to civilize it from a distance,” Fujimori said.
A pragmatic man, Fujimori had ordered, weeks after his government began, the “Fujishock” that eventually managed to reinsert Peru into the world economy.
On April 5, 1992, he closed Congress and the judiciary in a coup d’état with which he managed to concentrate power.
In September of that year, the government captured the Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán and his leadership, which was a serious blow to that terrorist group.
In 1993, Fujimori promulgated a new Constitution, in force to this day, which allowed, unlike the previous one, immediate presidential re-election, in periods of five years of Government. A possibility that was repealed after his departure from power.
Within this framework, in 1995 he surpassed the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, leading a second term marked by allegations of corruption and authoritarianism.
On April 22, 1997, the successful rescue operation of 71 of the 72 hostages from the house of the Japanese ambassador in Lima helped improve its popular acceptance.
In 2000, the possibility of a third term of government was allowed by the Congress of the Republic, which with the “authentic interpretation law” considered that his first term should not be counted since it had occurred within the framework of the old constitution.
Thus it was that he defeated Alejandro Toledo at the polls, assuming on July 28, 2000, a third term that would end quickly, with the events that began when two months later images of the intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, considered “the power of the shadows” of the government, giving money to a congressman in exchange for political support.
After the scandal, Fujimori paid Montesinos US$15 million in compensation and publicly thanked him for “the services provided to the nation.” The former intelligence advisor fled the country.
PHOTOS | The political life of Alberto Fujimori in images
Months later, in November 2000, Fujimori resigned from the presidency while in Japan and using the nationality inherited from his parents, he avoided being extradited to Peru for six years, which wanted him to face trials of corruption and violation of human rights.
The situation was different when in November 2005, when trying to return to Peru, for reasons that have not yet been clarified, the former president arrived in Chile, a country that handed him over to the Peruvian justice system after an extradition process that lasted two years. . He claimed to be innocent.
In April 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison as the direct perpetrator of the crimes of aggravated homicide and others to the detriment of the Cantuta students and the Barrios Altos case, where 25 people died.
Peruvians appear divided regarding the role of former President Fujimori in history. Those who applaud his “strong hand” were on the verge of bringing Keiko Fujimori, the former president’s daughter, to power in the presidential elections of 2011, 2016 and 2021.
The former president’s health was deteriorating since he had cancer removed from his tongue in 1997, which subsequently generated a series of recurrent precancerous lesions in his oral cavity.
In October 2012, Fujimori’s children formally asked then-President Ollanta Humala to grant a humanitarian pardon to the former president, who was affected, according to his doctors, by oral cancer, hypertension and severe depression.
In separate trials, the former president was also found guilty of breaking into Montesinos’ home to steal incriminating videos, taking money from the public treasury to pay the spy chief, and authorizing illegal wiretapping and bribing lawmakers and journalists.
He received a medical pardon for his human rights abuses in December 2017 from then-Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Kuczynski’s office issued a statement at the time, saying that Fujimori “suffers from a progressive, degenerative and incurable disease,” adding that “prison conditions pose a serious risk to his life, health and integrity.”
But the pardon sparked violent protests in the capital of Lima and attracted widespread criticism from human rights organizations and lawmakers.
Finally the pardon was annulled and in January 2019 he was returned to prison. Separately, in 2018, a Peruvian court ruled that he could be tried for allegedly authorizing the kidnappings, torture and murders of six people in 1992 in the central Peruvian city of Pativilca, according to state news agency Andina.
In December 2023, Fujimori was released from prison, after the Constitutional Court of Peru ordered his immediate release. His release from prison occurred because the high court’s ruling ratified a previous ruling by the same court, issued in March 2022, in which the effects of the humanitarian pardon granted to Fujimori in December 2017 by Kuczynski were restored.
Also a politician, his daughter Keiko ran unsuccessfully for president in 2021 for the third time. Her latest campaign acknowledged her father’s troubled political legacy and sought to reassure voters against his return to her authoritarian rule. However, she also promised to forgive him for his crimes. She ultimately came in second behind President Pedro Castillo, who took office on July 28 of that year and was removed from office on December 7, 2022.
Once released, in July 2024, Keiko Fujimori revealed that her father aspired to be a presidential candidate once again. “We have talked about it and decided together,” Keiko Fujimori said in a message posted on her X account.
