Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

PERU: Fujimori Denies Knowledge of Military Abuses

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Apr 5 2007 (IPS) - Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) is blaming the commanders of the armed forces during his regime for the criminal acts of which he stands accused, in an attempt to avoid extradition from Chile to Peru to face the charges against him.

In a motion before the Chilean Supreme Court of Justice to reject the extradition request, Fujimori pleaded he was innocent of the extrajudicial executions he is wanted for in Peru because he was ignorant of military and intelligence matters.

Fujimori&#39s defence lawyers, Chileans Gabriel Zaliasnik and Francisco Velozo, claimed that their client had no knowledge about the operations of the armed forces and the National Intelligence Service (SIN) when he took office on Jul. 28, 1990.

Consequently, they argued, Fujimori did not know what methods the army was using to combat the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla movement, much less the activities of the Colina paramilitary commando, which they alleged was set up during the previous administration (1985-1990) of current President Alan García.

The Peruvian justice system holds Fujimori responsible for two massacres perpetrated in Lima by the Colina death squad, made up of Army Intelligence Service (SIE) agents, as well as other crimes.

Fujimori fled Peru amid a government corruption scandal in 2000, and took refuge in Japan, where thanks to his dual Japanese-Peruvian citizenship, he was safe from extradition (Japan does not extradite its own citizens in the absence of a specific treaty).

In late 2005 he arrived out of the blue in Chile, where he was arrested, incarcerated for six months, and released conditionally but confined to Chilean territory ever since, awaiting a ruling on Peru&#39s extradition request.

The Chilean courts are expected to issue a ruling on the extradition request in a few weeks&#39 time. The charges include crimes against humanity, illicit personal enrichment and telephone tapping.

One of the massacres for which the former president is held responsible by the courts took place on Nov. 3, 1991 in Barrios Altos, where 15 people were killed. The other was on Jul. 18, 1992, when nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University were kidnapped and murdered.

Zaliasnik and Velozo&#39s motion to deny Peru&#39s extradition request, to which IPS obtained access, said that "it should be remembered that Fujimori had no military experience whatsoever."

"He was a civilian, a university professor whose career until the day he was elected (president) had been spent quietly and peacefully in university lecture halls. Nothing could be further from his world and life experience than the military and its operations," the defence stated.

But Fujimori&#39s alleged inexperience of military and intelligence affairs is contradicted by the fact that in 1990, after he had won the first round of the elections and faced a run-off against the second most voted candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, Fujimori appointed Vladimiro Montesinos as his adviser and liaison between SIN and the high command of the armed forces.

Montesinos, chief of the intelligence services and Fujimori&#39s principal adviser, is already serving a 15-year sentence for arms smuggling, bribery and other forms of corruption, while awaiting further verdicts on the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres and other human rights abuses.

Fujimori&#39s relationship with the military was so close that after his victory in the second ballot in June 1990 he moved into the Military Club and lived there until taking office.

"The armed forces go into action when, and only when, the government orders them to do so," retired General José Graham Ayllón, who was head of the army in 2004, told IPS.

"It&#39s the government that decides when to deploy the army and the other armed forces, so Fujimori must accept responsibility for military actions," he said.

The direct connection between Fujimori, Montesinos, the military high command and members of the Colina death squad prior to the killings at Barrios Altos and La Cantuta is proved by a document containing Fujimori&#39s personal recommendations for the promotion of a select group of officers because of their "special operations" against the guerrillas.

The memorandum from Fujimori dated Jul. 30, 1991 recommended the promotions of Fernando Rodríguez Zabalbeascoa, a founding member of the Colinas group, Santiago Martín Rivas, its chief of operations, and Carlos Pichilingüe, its administrative head.

In the same memo Fujimori also recommended promotions for two other officers, Alberto Pinto, then chief of the SIE, and Roberto Páucar, the brother of one of his cabinet ministers.

As if that weren&#39t enough, the president also recommended the promotion of commander Luis Cubas, Montesinos&#39 brother-in-law.

Four months later the Colina death squad committed the massacre at Barrios Altos. In July 1992 the officers who had been recommended by Fujimori received their promotions, and later the La Cantuta atrocities followed.

What has most annoyed Peruvian military officers is that Fujimori is trying to pin the blame on them. "It&#39s a defence ploy, and I&#39m not surprised that he&#39s using it as an argument," Graham Ayllón said. "But Fujimori must have known about the Colina groups&#39s operations, and therefore he should shoulder his share of the responsibility for what happened."

According to the former president&#39s legal defence counsel, the massacres at Barrios Altos and La Cantuta were committed by a paramilitary group organised by the first García administration and motivated by "events that occurred before our client took office as president of Peru."

Zaliasnik and Velozo also claimed that extrajudicial execution was an army practice that did not originate during Fujimori&#39s term of office.

"Whatever the motivation (of the killers), it was related to a particular and identifiable motive, which also originated within the Peruvian army," they said. "The decision to kill (the victims) was a decision by army officers."

However, Carlos Rivera, an expert at the Legal Defence Institute, said "it has been shown that Fujimori had a good grasp of the facts."

This makes it "impossible to accept such a simplistic argument as his lawyers have presented, where he attempts to deny any relationship with the events, and says that everything that happened was a result of personal decisions by the officers," he told IPS.

"It has been demonstrated that Fujimori and Montesinos modified the anti-subversive strategy. They shifted from a scorched-earth policy to one which gave more weight to the intelligence services, and operated by selectively annihilating opponents and subversives," he said.

When Fujimori&#39s defence arguments were made public, and pro-Fujimori legislators in the Peruvian Congress learned that he had blamed the army for the massacres, they could not believe their ears.

"I don&#39t believe he could have said that, because he really loved the armed forces," was the puzzled comment that former minister and current Fujimorista Deputy Luisa María Cuculiza made to IPS.