The bill is expected to benefit former President Alberto Fujimori and hundreds of other officers accused of abuses during the internal conflict of the 1980s and 1990s.
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Peru enacted a law on Friday, August 9, declaring crimes against humanity committed before 2002 statute-barred.. “No act prior to this date may be characterized as a crime against humanity or a war crime,” The law, which is due to come into force on Saturday, was approved despite a resolution from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in mid-June calling for the legislative process to be suspended.
The text is expected to end hundreds of ongoing investigations into alleged crimes committed during the internal conflict that left some 69,000 dead and 21,000 missing between 1980 and 2000. According to the new law, “No one may be prosecuted, convicted or punished for crimes against humanity or war crimes for acts committed before 1 July 2002”date of entry into force in Peru of the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court which stipulates that the most serious crimes are not subject to statute of limitations.
The bill is expected to benefit former President Alberto Fujimori and hundreds of other officers accused of abuses during the internal conflict of the 1980s and 1990s. The former president was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for ordering two massacres carried out in 1991 and 1992 by death squads in a Lima neighborhood and at the University of La Cantuta. But after 16 years in prison, the 86-year-old former president was released on December 7, 2023, for health reasons, despite the objection of the Inter-American Justice.
