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January 4, 2010

25-Year Sentence for Ex-Peruvian President Fujimori Upheld
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In news from Latin America, Peru’s supreme court has upheld the
twenty-five-year jail sentence handed to Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s former
president. Fujimori was convicted of directing the killings of
twenty-five people and overseeing a death squad as part of a “dirty war”
in the early 1990s. Fujimori is said to be the first democratically
elected Latin American leader to be found guilty of human rights abuses
in his own country. Gisela Ortiz Perea praised the court’s ruling. In
1992 her brother was kidnapped and assassinated by a pro-government
death squad.

Gisela Ortiz Perea: “We celebrate this sentence that ends a long path,
almost eighteen years of a fight for truth and for justice. For us, this
has been a very difficult fight that has exposed us emotionally and
publicly. This has taken a huge emotional toll for each one of us;
nonetheless, we are satisfied, because at the end of this long path we
finally had justice, and justice was made on the principal person
responsible for the deaths of our loved ones."



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