Homicide Charges for Exiled Fujimori

Peru’s attorney general filed homicide charges against disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori on Wednesday, linking him to two multiple killings by paramilitary death squads in the early 1990s.

Fujimori is in exile in Japan, and Peru hopes that the charges will prompt the Asian nation to extradite him.

Prosecutors allege that Fujimori “coauthored” the killings and “knew in detail the operations” of the death squad known as the Colina group, according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.

The Colina group is accused of gunning down 15 people in 1991 during a barbecue at a Lima tenement. Group members were also linked to the kidnapping and slaying of nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University in 1992.

Prosecutors are also charging that Fujimori had knowledge of the killing of former intelligence agent Mariela Barreto, whose dismembered and decapitated body was found in March 1997, the statement said.

Congress paved the way for the charges last month by lifting the constitutional immunity of Fujimori, who has been in his parents’ native Japan since November, when his 10-year rule collapsed in a growing corruption scandal.

The homicide and forced disappearance charges, which Peruvian officials say constitute crimes against humanity, are the most serious to date against Fujimori.

Fujimori also faces charges of abandonment of office and dereliction of duty, which carry a maximum two-year prison sentence. He denies any wrongdoing and claims he is the subject of “vulgar political persecution” in Peru.

Japan announced that Fujimori was entitled to citizenship shortly after he arrived there. The country has no extradition treaty with Peru.

Though Peru hopes the new charges will persuade Japan to extradite him, Japanese officials have reiterated their opposition to such a move.

Under its own laws, Peru cannot make an extradition request until a Supreme Court judge formally accepts the charges against Fujimori and opens investigative proceedings. The court has 15 days to do so.