Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was arrested, tried, and convicted for a number of crimes related to corruption and human rights abuses that occurred during his government. Fujimori was president from 1990 to 2000. His presidency ended when he fled the country in the midst of a scandal involving corruption and human rights violations.
Wanted in Peru, Fujimori maintained a self-imposed exile until his arrest while visiting Chile in November 2005. He was extradited to face criminal charges in Peru in September 2007.
In December 2007, Fujimori was convicted of ordering an illegal search and seizure, and was sentenced to six years in prison. The Peruvian Supreme Court upheld the decision upon his appeal. In April 2009 Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad during his government's battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s.
The verdict, delivered by a three-judge panel, marked the first time that an elected head of state has been extradited to his home country, tried, and convicted of human rights violations. Fujimori was specifically found guilty of murder, bodily harm, and two cases of kidnapping. In July 2009 Fujimori was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for embezzlement after he admitted to giving $15 million from the Peruvian treasury to his intelligence service chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Two months later he pled guilty in a fourth trial to bribery and received an additional six-year term. Under Peruvian law all the sentences must run concurrently, with a maximum length of imprisonment of 25 years.
On 24 December 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned him on health grounds. The Peruvian Supreme Court overturned the pardon in October 2018, ruling that crimes against humanity are unpardonable.
After Fujimori fled to Japan, the government of Peru requested his extradition. Because Japan recognizes Fujimori as a Japanese citizen rather than a Peruvian citizen due to the Master Nationality Rule, and because Japan refuses to extradite its citizens to other countries, Fujimori was not extradited from Japan.
Arrest in Chile
On 6 November 2005, Alberto Fujimori unexpectedly arrived in Santiago, Chile, on a private aircraft, having flown via Tijuana from Tokyo. His flight had passed through Peruvian airspace on its path from Mexico to Chile. There were numerous firings over alleged negligence in the handling of the Fujimori flight to Chile. As investigations continued, two Chilean and four Mexican immigration officers were dismissed for failing to notify superiors of Fujimori's stop at the time of his arrival. Colonel Carlos Medel, head of Interpol in Lima, was also fired for negligence, apparently having ordered his staff to switch off the 24-hour Interpol warning system at the time of the overflight.
Mexican officials suggested Fujimori was not arrested in Mexico because there was no judicial order for his arrest. Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, after learning of the arrival of Fujimori in Chile, called for an "urgent meeting" in the governmental palace. Toledo called Chile's foreign minister, Ignacio Walker, and requested the detention of Fujimori. A few hours later, Fujimori was detained on an arrest warrant issued by a Chilean judge, who was told by Chile's Supreme Court to consider Lima's request for Fujimori's pre-trial detention, as part of the extradition process.
Fujimori was then transferred to the School of Investigations, Chile's Investigative Police academy, where he spent the night. Notified of the reasons for his arrest, Fujimori petitioned for provisional freedom during the extradition proceedings, but his petition was denied. Later in the day, he was transferred to the School of Gendarmerie, a training academy for corrections officers, where he was detained until May 2006.
Extradition proceedings
The decision whether or not to extradite Fujimori was delegated by the Chilean government to the Supreme Court, following precedent dating to a 1932 extradition treaty between the two nations. Chilean law suggests that in addition to the terms of the treaty, extradition requests must also be based on whether there is sufficient evidence against the accused – not necessarily enough to convict him of the charges, but sufficient to justify (from a Chilean legal point of view) the indictments the accused faces. This meant that Peruvian prosecutors had to demonstrate that the crimes for which Fujimori has been charged in Peru were just as severe in Chile.