Former President Alberto Fujimori, convicted of crimes against humanity, dies at age 86

He had been convicted of crimes against humanity, including two massacres of civilians committed by an army squadron during the fight against the Shining Path Maoist guerrillas in the early 1990s.

Alberto Fujimori, who ruled Peru with an iron fist between 1990 and 2000 and spent the last years of his life in prison for corruption and crimes against humanity, died on Wednesday, September 11 in Lima at the age of 86. “After a long battle with cancer, our father, Alberto Fujimori, has just gone to meet the Lord,” announced his children Keiko, Hiro, Sachie and Kenji Fujimori.

The Presidency of the Republic has confirmed “the sad news”, presenting his “sincere condolences to the family”. “May God rest his soul and may he rest in peace”, concludes the presidential statement. “We will coordinate with the family to find out their wishes regarding the funeral of the former president,” said the ministerial chief of staff.

The former leader, born in Japan, was released in December on the orders of the Constitutional Court. “for humanitarian reasons”despite opposition from the Inter-American Justice, after spending 16 years in a prison in eastern Lima. He was serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity, including two massacres of civilians committed by an army squadron as part of the fight against the Shining Path Maoist guerrillas in the early 1990s.

The former president, nicknamed “El Chino” (the Chinese), who deeply divided the country, had been hospitalized several times in recent years. He was diagnosed in May with a malignant tumor in his tongue, on which he had had a cancerous lesion for more than 27 years. In 2018, Alberto Fujimori made public a diagnosis of a lung tumor.

A follower of neoliberalism, Alberto Fujimori was a “precursor in Latin America of a style of politics”political analyst Augusto Alvarez told AFP. He said the former president, who burst onto the public scene with his unexpected electoral victory over writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a future Nobel Prize winner for literature, promoted a model “authoritarian and populist” which has been reproduced in many other countries, both by left-wing and right-wing movements.