Peru Election 2006

Una nota publicada por el diario La República dice que, según los expertos en derecho internacional y los activistas de derechos humanos, la extradición del ex presidente Alberto Fujimori es el principio del fin de la impunidad de los dictadores a nivel mundial, basándose en interesantes artículos como “The End of Impunity” de Newsweek y “Fugitive Returned” de The Economist, influyentes revistas que señalan como el mundo observa con gran expectativa al tribunal que juzgará al ex presidente.

El caso Fujimori es una severa advertencia para los dictadores que cometen crímenes
Influyentes revistas señalan que el mundo observa con expectativa al tribunal que juzgará al ex presidente extraditado.
Redacción La República, 01 de octubre del 2007.
La decisión de la Corte Suprema de Chile de enviar al ex mandatario Alberto Fujimori a una “cómoda y espartana prisión” en Lima es, según los expertos en derecho internacional y los activistas de derechos humanos, un paso decisivo para que los ex dictadores del mundo rindan cuentas por las atrocidades que han cometido.
De acuerdo con el corresponsal para América Latina de la revista norteamericana “Newsweek”, Joseph Contreras, la extradición de Fujimori abre la oportunidad para que los ex dictadores que han cometido delitos sean procesados por los jueces de su propio país.
“De hecho, el caso Fujimori es sólo el último de una serie de procesos judiciales seguidos contra tiranos y ‘señores de la guerra’, que se incrementan cada vez más e impiden que estos eludan a los tribunales”, señala el periodista.
Autócratas, cuidado
Con el elocuente título de “El fin de la impunidad”, Contreras destaca que la resolución judicial chilena es una advertencia “para los jefes de Estado que deben afrontar las consecuencias de sus actos”.
“Expertos en derecho afirman que el caso Fujimori demuestra que cada vez es más difícil escapar impunes”, señala Contreras.
El periodista de la revista “Newsweek” también destaca que la Corte Suprema de Chile citó un fallo de 2001 de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos para demostrar que la ley de amnistía que aprobó el ex presidente Fujimori benefició a violadores de los derechos humanos, como los agentes del Servicio de Inteligencia del Ejército (SIE) que formaron parte del destacamento especial “Colina” que perpetró los crímenes de Barrios Altos y La Cantuta.
“Según los expertos, el caso de Alberto Fujimori revela que aumenta cada vez más la presión sobre los países que aceptan acoger a los ex déspotas para que los entreguen a la justicia”, dice Contreras: “Los granujas huirán, pero no podrán esconderse por mucho tiempo”.
En la misma condición
La prestigiosa revista inglesa “The Economist” destaca por su parte que al ser extraditado Fujimori este se coloca detrás de los barrotes al igual que su ex asesor de inteligencia Vladimiro Montesinos y el ex líder de Sendero Luminoso Abimael. “Y sin embargo, para muchos, en la década como presidente, los peruanos lo miran como un salvador”, precisa “The Economist”.
La publicación resalta el papel neurálgico que tendrá Montesinos en el proceso judicial contra Alberto Fujimori.
“La más siniestra figura del régimen de Fujimori acaparó un poder ilimitado. Montesinos extorsionó y sobornó a gran escala por un monto que alcanzaría los US$ 1,000 millones, según sus acusadores”, indica la revista: “Fujimori asegura que no sabía nada de lo que hacía su jefe de espionaje. Sin embargo, Montesinos, quien afronta varios juicios y ha sido sentenciado hasta 20 años de prisión, será una figura clave en los procesos. El ex jefe de inteligencia y varios oficiales del Ejército afrontan también juicio por las acciones del grupo Colina”.
Ante la Corte Suprema de Chile, Fujimori llegó a sostener que las matanzas de Barrios Altos y La Cantuta fueron actos cometidos por efectivos del Ejército por su cuenta y riesgo, y que dichos asesinatos no eran parte de la policía contrasubversiva del régimen. La declaración molestó vivamente a los militares enjuiciados por los asesinatos, quienes incluso han pedido ser juzgados en un tribunal castrense porque sólo se limitaron a cumplir órdenes.
“El caso Fujimori será una prueba para los jueces del Perú”, manifiesta “The Economist”: “Y también para el presidente Alan García. (…) Desde que ganó las pasadas elecciones, hizo campaña por el libre mercado y logró una mayoría legislativa con el respaldo de los fujimoristas”.
“The Economist” reporta que Fujimori pretendió regresar a Perú otra vez como “el gran salvador”, pero recuerda que las encuestas indican que una mayoría no votaría otra vez por él y que ahora está en las mismas condiciones que Vladimiro Montesinos y Abimael Guzmán: preso.
Precisiones
EJEMPLAR. En 1998, un tribunal de Tanzania condenó a cadena perpetua al ex primer ministro de Ruanda Jean Kambanda por haber alentado el genocidio del pueblo tutsi.
PENDIENTE. El ex militar golpista haitiano Raoul Cédras vive apaciblemente en Panamá desde 1994, disfrutando de los millones que supuestamente robó. Y en 1986, el ex sátrapa Jean-Claude Duvalier (a) “Baby Doc” se exilió en Francia.
‘Que se cuiden los dictadores’
Óscar Raúl Cardoso, uno de los periodistas más importantes de América Latina, del diario argentino “Clarín”, escribió que la justicia ha dado un gran salto entre 1998 y 2007: la frustrada extradición del ex dictador Augusto Pinochet Ugarte y la aprobación de la extradición del ex déspota Alberto Fujimori. “Que se cuiden los dictadores”, dice.
“Todos los datos del episodio Fujimori sugieren que el destino de Fujimori es efectivamente más revelador de cómo el mundo está reduciendo aceleradamente su tamaño para lo que antes era una práctica común: casi cualquier ex jefe de Estado –legítimo o ilegítimo en su origen– podía aspirar a la impunidad hasta el fin de sus días con solo poner algunos kilómetros y fronteras nacionales de distancia entre el país donde había asesinado y castigado a su pueblo y un nuevo lugar de residencia”, señala Cardoso.
The End of Impunity
The case of Alberto Fujimori suggests that other rogue heads of state will face consequences for their actions.
By Joseph Contreras. Newsweek International.
Oct. 8, 2007 issue – After nearly two yearsunder house arrest in Santiago, Chile, former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori settled into his new quarters last week—a comfortable if spartan suite of rooms at a police base in the eastern suburbs of Lima—where he will await his upcoming trials on charges of corruption and human-rights abuses. If convicted, Fujimori, 69, is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. But Chile’s decision to send Fujimori home has already sent ripples throughout the world of international criminal justice.
International-law experts and human-rights activists hailed the ruling of the Chilean justices as an important step toward making ex-dictators more accountable for their alleged atrocities. They say the precedent set by the five judges of the Chilean Supreme Court will make it easier for jurists in other countries to OK the extradition of ex-dictators facing criminal charges in their native lands. In fact, the Fujimori case is only the latest in a series of judicial proceedings involving tyrants and warlords that have made it increasingly difficult for them to elude prosecution.
The first breakthrough came in the 1990s when the United Nations Security Council set up special international courts to prosecute Yugoslav and Rwandan officials accused of gross human-rights abuses. Slobodan Milosevic died before The Hague tribunal could render its judgment. But a tribunal established in Tanzania sentenced former Rwandan prime minister Jean Kambanda to life imprisonment in 1998 for his role in the genocide carried out against that nation’s ethnic Tutsi population—the first time a former chief of state had been held responsible for human-rights violations committed during his tenure.
The wiggle room narrowed further a few weeks later, when former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was placed under house arrest in England. While the attempt to prosecute him was ultimately blocked by then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to send the retired general back home on medical grounds, a House of Lords ruling overturned the longstanding judicial practice of granting former chiefs of state immunity from detention in foreign nations for serious abuses perpetrated at home. Legal experts say the Fujimori case is going to make it harder still for onetime autocrats to escape with impunity. The Chilean court cited a 2001 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights striking down a Peruvian law that granted amnesty to government officials implicated in human-rights violations.
There are still plenty of dictators and despots who remain on the lam—or in the lap of luxury—partly because politics often trumps legal precedent. Former Haitian military strongman Raoul Cédras lives quietly in Panama, having cut a deal with Clinton administration officials to relinquish power in 1994 in exchange for political asylum there. Jean-Claude Duvalier, the plump, spendthrift heir to Haiti’s notorious tyrant François (Papa Doc) Duvalier, was allowed to settle in France after he was toppled from power in 1986. “Who gets political asylum and who gets fed to the wolves depends a lot on the services they’ve rendered to a major power, and especially to the United States,” says DePaul University law professor M. Cherif Bassiouni.
But legal experts say the kinds of precedents set down in the Fujimori case will increase the pressure on countries to withdraw the welcome mat for ex-despots and bring them to justice. Increasingly, it seems, rogues can run, but they can no longer hide.
With Jimmy Langman in Santiago and Lucy Conger in Lima
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
Peru. Fugitive returned
Sep 27th 2007 | LIMA. From The Economist print edition
A landmark extradition sees Alberto Fujimori facing justice
ReutersFOR much of his decade as president between 1990 and 2000, Peruvians saw Alberto Fujimori as a saviour. He conquered the hyperinflation bequeathed by his predecessor, Alan García, and restored growth. With Vladimiro Montesinos, his shadowy intelligence chief, he crushed the Maoist terrorists of the Shining Path and locked up their leader, Abimael Guzmán. Now the saviour has joined Messrs Montesinos and Guzmán behind bars.
There was always a dark side to Mr Fujimori. Though twice freely elected, he shut down his country’s Congress in 1992 and used other strong-arm methods. He fled to Japan in 2000 after trying fraudulently to win a third, unconstitutional term. In November 2005 he flew to Chile, in an apparent bid to slip back into Peru and rally his supporters for last year’s presidential election. There he was arrested at the Peruvian government’s request.
In a decision hailed by human-rights campaigners, Chile’s Supreme Court ruled on September 21st that Mr Fujimori should be extradited to Peru to face seven sets of charges. These include complicity in the actions of the Colina Group, an army death squad that killed 25 civilians in two separate incidents (one of them involved the slaughter of those attending a barbecue which the intelligence service believed was to raise funds for Shining Path). Most of the charges relate to corruption: the most sinister feature of Mr Fujimori’s rule was the unlimited power granted to Mr Montesinos to bribe and extort on a scale that prosecutors say topped $1 billion.
Mr Fujimori claims not to have known the doings of his spy chief. But Mr Montesinos, who has already been found guilty on several charges and is serving a 20-year jail sentence, will be a key figure in his trials. Mr Montesinos and several members of the army are still being tried for the actions of the Colina group.
The Fujimori case had the potential to strain Peru’s relations with Chile, which while much improved are easily inflamed by hurt from defeat in 19th-century wars. But Chile’s Supreme Court stuck to the letter of the country’s law. In approving extradition while rejecting six of the charges, it mainly based itself on Chile’s own penal code rather than on international norms.
Nevertheless, some lawyers see the verdict as a wider turning point. The court followed the ruling of Britain’s House of Lords in the case of Chile’s former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in dismissing defence arguments that Mr Fujimori, as a former head of state, enjoyed immunity from criminal prosecution.
José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, points out that the Fujimori case marks the first time that a court has extradited a former head of state for trial in his own country, rather than by an international tribunal. In doing so, Chile’s Supreme Court, one of the more formalistic and conservative in Latin America, has up-ended the region’s long tradition of granting political asylum to former rulers. Under that tradition, Panama shelters several disgraced presidents, including Haiti’s Raoul Cédras.
Another former Haitian dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, this week asked forgiveness of his country. Mr Duvalier, in exile in France since 1986, is believed to want to return home after running out of money. But the country’s president, René Préval, said his government would press ahead with efforts to recover money he believed was stolen during Mr Duvalier’s rule.
Mr Fujimori’s case will be a test for Peru’s judges and for Mr García who, in an irony of history, is again its president. The judiciary was undermined when Mr Fujimori appointed pliant judges in the 1990s. It has since taken steps towards greater professionalism. The defendant enjoys certain privileges: as a former head of state, he will be tried by the Supreme Court, and under international law he can be tried only for those matters on which the Chilean judges approved his extradition.
In 1992 Mr García himself sought asylum in Colombia, fearing corruption charges from Mr Fujimori (they were eventually dropped). Since winning last year’s election, having campaigned as a free-marketeer, he has relied for a legislative majority on the backing of Mr Fujimori’s supporters. They are now led by Mr Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, who won 603,000 votes in Lima, three times more than any other congressional candidate.
That alliance is now under strain. Mr Fujimori is being held at a police base, rather than under house arrest as he hoped. Mr García says his former adversary’s fate should be decided strictly according to the law. Ms Fujimori, who is likely to run for the presidency in 2011, calls her father the victim of a vendetta.
In trying to return to Peru, Mr Fujimori seemed to hope that he would again be greeted as a saviour. But Peru has moved on: in polls, a majority say they would never vote for him. Ms Fujimori has some of her father’s political talents, and Peru’s politics is notoriously unpredictable. But rather than the return to the presidential palace he dreamed of, it may be Mr Fujimori’s fate to join Mr Montesinos and Mr Guzmán in the high-security jail he himself ordered built in a naval fortress.