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| Tirade: Alberto Fujimori screamed at judges Monday during Day 1 of his trials in Lima, Peru. Francisco Medina/Reuters |
Fujimori outburst sets tone for Peru human rights trials
Peru's former leader let loose a tirade as his human rights and corruption trials began Monday.
By Lucien Chauvin | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the December 12, 2007 edition
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Lima, Peru - The multiple human rights and corruption trials of Peru's Alberto Fujimori got off to a colorful start this week when the former president launched into a tirade denying the charges against him and taking credit for the country's current economic boom.
Mr. Fujimori, who ruled Peru from 1990-2000, began facing a three-judge panel Monday on charges that he approved the death-squad murders of 15 people in 1991 and nine students and a professor the following year. The trial also includes the charge of authorizing the kidnapping and torture of a journalist and a businessman, also in 1992.
He also may face a seven-year sentence in a separate trial on abuse of authority charges.
Fujimori disrupted the mundane administrative chores of the initial hearings Monday when he asked permission to briefly address the court before entering a plea.
The former president immediately threw up his arms, contorted his face, and started screaming that he had saved Peru from imminent collapse when he first took office in July 1990.
"I received Peru in 1990 in a state of collapse, with hyperinflation, international isolation, and widespread terrorism... Peru is progressing today because there were reforms in the context of respect for human rights," he yelled. "I totally reject the charges. I am innocent."
After shouting down the chief judge for a few moments, Fujimori stopped, politely thanked the court for the chance to speak and, smoothing his dark gray, pinstripe suit, calmly returned to his seat in the center of the small courtroom built for the trial on a police base where he has been incarcerated since September.
The outburst fits the image that both Fujimori's supporters and detractors hold of him, and it is likely to set the tone for the trials, which are expected to last at least six months.
"If he acts this way, in the context of a trial and while under arrest, imagine how he must have been when he had all the power in his hands as president," says Gloria Cano, a lawyer representing victims of those killed in the 1991 massacre.
Fujimori is proud of his legacy
Fujimori, a math professor, stunned Peruvians in 1990 by coming out of nowhere to win the presidency. He took office with inflation galloping in four digits, the economy shrinking by double digits, and nearly 75 percent of Peru's territory under a state of emergency because of the actions of two leftist rebels groups, the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
Fujimori's economic reforms stopped inflation and reinserted Peru into the world financial community while new antiterrorism laws facilitated the arrests of the heads of the two subversive groups, effectively stopping them as threats to the Peruvian state. Fujimori and his followers hope that this is what Peruvians remember, and it is what he focused on in Monday's outburst.
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