Peruvian Judge Issues Warrant for Ex-President Fujimori

A judge issued an international arrest warrant Thursday for disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori over his alleged role in two death-squad massacres in the early 1990s, a court spokeswoman said Thursday.

Peru hopes the warrant will pave the way for Fujimori’s eventual extradition from Japan. He has been in exile there since his 10-year government collapsed in November under mounting corruption scandals.

The widely anticipated warrant was issued by Supreme Court Judge Jose Luis Lecaros, court spokeswoman Graciela Uribe said.

It comes one week after Atty. Gen. Nelly Calderon filed charges including homicide and forced disappearance that could bring up to 25 years in prison. The charges allege that Fujimori “co-authored” two massacres and “knew in detail the operations” of the Colina paramilitary death squad.

Lecaros also ordered Fujimori’s assets frozen in an amount totaling about $1 million.

Fujimori denies any wrongdoing and claims he is the subject of political persecution. He also denies that he holds multimillion-dollar bank accounts in Tokyo.

Officials in Japan have said repeatedly that they have no intention of forcing Fujimori to return. No extradition treaty exists between the two countries, and Japanese law prohibits the extradition of its citizens to stand trial for crimes committed in other countries.

It was not immediately clear if Interpol in Tokyo would act on the warrant. Calls to Japan’s Foreign Ministry went unanswered early this morning in Tokyo.

Fujimori fled to his parents’ native Japan last fall and was granted citizenship shortly after he arrived.

Fujimori, who won an unprecedented third term in a May 2000 vote widely seen as rigged, was toppled months later when his now-jailed ex-spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who awaits trial on charges from murder to money laundering, was seen in a secretly taped video paying an apparent bribe to a politician.