Lima: Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted for human rights abuses in a brutal war against Maoist rebels, died on Wednesday at the age of 86 after a lengthy battle with cancer. His close colleagues had earlier visited him, saying he was in a critical condition.
"After a long battle with cancer, our father, Alberto Fujimori, has just departed to meet the Lord," said his daughter Keiko Fujimori in a post on X, also signed by the former Peruvian leader's other children. Alberto Fujimori had been pardoned in December from his convictions for corruption and responsibility for the murder of 25 people.
Who was Alberto Fujimori?
Fujimori, born in 1938 to Japanese immigrants, was the former chancellor of a farming university and a mathematics professor elected to office in 1990 by defeating Mario Vargas Llosa. He quickly established himself as a cunning politician whose hands-on style produced results even as he angered critics for concentrating power. He steered economic growth in Peru during the 1990s that made it one of Latin America's most stable economies.
Fujimori was married twice. A public falling-out with his first wife Susana Higuchi while he was president led him to name daughter Keiko as the first lady. The couple had three other children, including Kenjo Fujimori, also a politician.
Under Fujimori, the feared leader of the Maoist Shining Path, Abimael Guzman, was captured - dealing a crucial blow to a movement that in the 1980s seemed close to toppling the Peruvian state. However, many Peruvians saw Fujimori as an autocrat after he used military tanks to shut down Congress in 1992, redrafting the constitution to his liking to push free-market reforms and tough anti-terrorism laws.
A slew of corruption scandals during his 10-year administration also turned public opinion against him. After he amended the constitution to allow himself to successfully run for a third term in 2000, videos emerged of his top adviser and spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos doling out cash to bribe politicians.
Fujimori's 'death squads' against communist rebels
Following the videos, Fujimori was forced to flee the country and seek refuge in Japan, where he was a dual citizen and safe from extradition. He resigned via fax from Tokyo and then unsuccessfully campaigned for a Japanese senatorial seat. At Peru, legal cases against him piled up, including accusations that he ordered the use of death squads in the battle against Shining Path militants.
In 1997, he devised a plan to dig tunnels under the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima to end a four-month hostage crisis after another insurgency, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, took 500 people captive for 126 days. In a surprise attack, Fujimori sent in more than 100 commandos in a raid that killed all 14 insurgents.
To everyone's surprise, Fujimori decided to head back to Peru in hopes of forgiveness and a return to politics. He was detained in Chile and extradited to Peru in 2007. Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for being the mastermind behind the slayings of 25 Peruvians while the government fought the Shining Path rebels.
In 2017, Fujimori was briefly pardoned by then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Months later, Kuczynski was impeached and the pardon overturned by Peru's top constitutional court, sending Fujimori back to the special prison that held him and no other inmates. The court restored the pardon in December 2023, releasing the ailing Fujimori, who had suffered from stomach ulcers, hypertension and tongue cancer.
In May this year, Fujimori announced he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumour. His legacy was enshrined in his bold free-market reforms, popularly known as the 'Fuji-shock' when he lifted the subsidies that kept food essentials affordable amid the world's worst hyperinflation in the early 1990s.
(with agency input)
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