[progchat_action] Peru's Fujimori faces trial for civil war abuses
 
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 10:58:17 -0600 (CST)

Peru's Fujimori faces trial for civil war abuses

By Terry Wade
Reuters
Fri Dec 7, 2007 10:40am EST

Lima  - For 15 years, Raida Condor organized marches and lobbied Peru's
Congress in pursuit of what seemed liked an impossible goal: putting former
President Alberto Fujimori on trial for the murder of her son, Armando.

That day finally comes on Monday when Fujimori will stand before justices of
the Andean country's Supreme Court to face charges he violated human rights
during his 1990-2000 rule.

"We aren't looking for revenge, but we demand justice," Condor, who often
appears in public with a large picture of her son on a string around her
neck, told Reuters this week.

He was one of nine students snatched along with a teacher from La Cantuta
university by a government security squad in 1992. The 10 suspected leftists
were later executed, their bodies dumped in a shallow grave outside the
capital Lima.

Fujimori's trial, which will be televised, is seen by rights activists as a
remarkable turning point for a country long hobbled by a weak judicial
system, impunity for the powerful, and painful memories of a civil war that
claimed tens of thousands of lives.

It is also a rare case of a former head of state facing trial in his own
country on human rights violations.

"This is an opportunity to address human rights abuses, affirm Peru's
commitment to democracy ... and allow the judiciary to regain its
independence," said Walter Alban, a law professor who served as Peru's
rights ombudsman after Fujimori left office.

"Fujimori was elected, but he governed as a dictator," Alban said.

The Supreme Court will hear charges that Fujimori ordered his security team
to carry out the massacre at La Cantuta, another one that claimed 15 lives,
and two kidnappings.

If convicted, Fujimori faces up to 30 years in prison.

A separate trial will follow for charges that his intelligence agency
wiretapped political opponents and paid bribes to broadcasters and members
of Congress.

Prosecutors say their case is airtight after Chile's Supreme Court studied
the charges and extradited Fujimori in September. The ruling ended seven
years of exile for the 69-year-old former president, five of them in Japan.

KIDNAPPINGS, DISAPPEARANCES

Condor's son Armando was just one of many Peruvians ensnared in
counter-insurgency campaigns against two left-wing rebel groups -- the
Maoist guerrillas known as the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru
Revolutionary Movement.

Critics say Fujimori's administration often violated civil rights and
sometimes targeted innocent people in its zeal to stamp out guerrillas and
leftist militants.

Universities were seen as breeding grounds of rebellion so spies were
planted in student groups. Suspected radicals were put under surveillance
and some were tortured and murdered.

Fujimori used the threat of terrorism to consolidate power, shutting down
Congress in 1992 to pass tough laws targeting  armed leftist groups.

Months later, Fujimori scored a major political victory when police caught
Abimael Guzman, the supreme leader of the Shining Path, whose soft-spoken
demeanor belied his deep faith in using violence as a tool for political
change.

Even after the capture of Guzman, who was arguably the biggest threat to
Peru's government, Fujimori's grip on power tightened during the next eight
years.

Some people without any links to leftist groups were persecuted, apparently
to settle personal scores.

"They threatened to kill my wife and each of my daughters ... and said I
wouldn't make it home alive," Gustavo Gorriti, a journalist who was
kidnapped by the military, told Reuters.

He had written stories in the 1980s linking Vladimiro Montesinos to drug
traffickers and was later targeted during Fujimori's rule when Montesinos, a
former military officer turned lawyer, led the government's intelligence
apparatus.

Montesinos, who was once Fujimori's closest confidante and is now in jail,
is expected to testify against him.

Although polls show the majority of Peruvians oppose Fujimori, up to a third
of voters support him.

He is credited with bringing peace, ending hyperinflation and passing
reforms that have helped turn Peru into one of the world's fastest-growing
economies.

His supporters say it is unfair to target the man who ended a vicious
guerrilla war that erupted in 1980, when the Shining Path took up arms.

Around 70,000 people died or disappeared in fighting and massacres between
the military, the Shining Path, the Tupac Amaru, and peasants in poor
mountain towns. Most were killed before Fujimori took office in 1990, and
the violence quickly faded after Guzman and other Shining Path leaders were
captured.

"I think it's absurd to make the man who defeated subversives stand trial,"
says Fujimori's daughter Keiko, who is a member of Congress and often touted
as a candidate for president in 2011.

(Additional reporting by Marco Aquino and Jean Luis Arce; Editing by Kieran
Murray)

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