LIMA (AFP) – Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, 85, was freed from prison after a court reinstated a pardon of his 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity.
Fujimori, who served from 1990 to 2000 and is now in poor health, left the Barbadillo prison in Lima and was greeted by his children Keiko, a three time failed presidential hopeful, and Kenji, a businessman. The elder Fujimori wore nasal tubes providing him with oxygen from a tank.
They all drove away in a gray truck that moved slowly through a crowd of cheering supporters, AFP reporters observed.
“Our heart is bursting with joy, because this man was imprisoned unfairly,” said one supporter who gave her name only as Nikita.
Keiko Fujumori said her father’s condition is fragile.
“The most important thing is to take care of him and that he recover little by little,” she told reporters outside her home. She added: “We know that the best therapy is the love of his family.”
Fujimori was sent to prison in 2009 over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people, including a child, were killed in supposed anti-terrorist operations.
The Constitutional Court ordered him to be freed for humanitarian reasons, reinstating a pardon that was first granted in 2017 but revoked by the Supreme Court two years later.
Fujimori, who is of Japanese heritage, has divided Peruvians like few other ex-leaders.
For some, he bolstered economic growth through his neo-liberal economic policies, and deserves praise for crushing left-wing insurgencies, including the Shining Path rebels.
Others remember with loathing his ruthless, authoritarian government style.
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights urged authorities not to immediately free him earlier, seeking time to assess the Peruvian court ruling.
Peru’s Constitutional Court had ordered Fujimori to be released last year on humanitarian grounds, but the Inter-American court then also urged against the move, which the government in Lima heeded.
