Human Rights Court Urges Peru Not To Release Jailed Former President Alberto Fujimori

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) urged Peru to "refrain" from releasing jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, Friday, despite the South American country's Constitutional Court ruling for him to be freed.

The IACHR resolution published on Friday overruled Peru’s top Constitutional Court, which had ruled on March 17 to permit Fujimori’s release on "humanitarian" grounds. The regional human rights court said that "the sentence issued by the Constitutional Court on March 17, 2022, which restores the effects of the pardon in favor of Alberto Fujimori, did not comply with the certain conditions."

In 2017, then-president Pablo Kuczynski granted Fujimori a humanitarian pardon in exchange for support for his weak government from lawmakers close to the former president. However, the country's Supreme Court overturned it in 2018 and ordered Fujimori's return to prison to serve his sentence for human rights abuses.

The Constitutional Court's March decision restored the humanitarian pardon, but the regional human rights court on March 30 requested Peru not to Fujimori until it could examine the case.

Fujimori was Peru’s president from 1990 to 2000, he has been serving a 25-year sentence since 2009 for two massacres committed by army death squads during his presidency. It included 25 people, consisting of a child, who were all killed in the supposed "anti-terrorist" operations in 1991 and 1992. The murders were carried out by a clandestine military squad in two massacres that occurred during his term. The military killed with impunity and with the support of his administration in the fight against the Shining Path terrorist group.

One of the massacres happened in Barrios Altos where 15 neighbors were killed during a party, the other in La Cantuta, a university that trains school teachers, in which nine students and a professor died.

The former president is also convicted in three other corruption cases for which he owes $13.6 million. Fujimori's family has submitted several petitions to have him released due to health issues, but those have all been rejected.

Special prosecutor Carlos Reaño told Associated Press that officials would keep Fujimori, 83, in detention at the regional court's request. Fujimori is being held in an exclusive prison where he is the only prisoner.

"The State of Peru must refrain from implementing the sentence handed down by the Constitutional Court of Peru on March 17, 2022, which reinstates the effects of the pardon for humanitarian reasons granted to Alberto Fujimori on 24 December 2017," the court said on Friday. Peru has said it would abide by any decision of the IACHR.