Relatives of victims of Alberto Fujimori’s government today asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACt) to declare Peru in contempt for releasing the former president, who was serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity.
“We ask the Inter-American Court to issue a resolution clearly and forcefully indicating that the (Peruvian) State has disobeyed an order (its) and to issue a report to the OAS General Assembly on that basis,” he said at a conference. press Gloria Cano, lawyer for the bereaved.
According to the AFP news agency, the defender considered that the pardon granted to Fujimori this week is illegal and the Organization of American States (OAS) must evaluate “Peruvian non-compliance” and force the government to abide by the Court’s rulings.
Relatives from the La Cantuta, Barrios Altos and Pativilca cases participated in the press conference, where an army death squad executed 31 civilians within the framework of the war against the Shining Path guerrilla.
“We feel unprotected, the family members do not have a justice system that guarantees our rights, we do not have a government and Congress capable of raising their voices for the victims,” said Gisela Ortiz, sister of one of the students murdered in the La massacre. Cantuta in 1992.
Fujimori was released from prison on Wednesday, a day after the Constitutional Court (TC) ordered his “immediate” release.
The Inter-American Court asked the Peruvian State to refrain from releasing the former president until that court “has all the necessary elements to analyze whether said decision complies with the conditions” of its own jurisprudence.
For its part, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today rejected Peru’s decision to grant freedom to the former president.
“The Commission reiterates that granting pardons or other exemptions from responsibility to people convicted of serious violations of human rights and crimes against humanity can generate a serious form of impunity,” the IACHR detailed in a statement.
“The measure or legal figure that allows the health, life and integrity of the convicted person to be protected must be the one that least restricts the victims’ right of access to justice and must be applied in very extreme cases and due to a prevailing need,” he added. .
Fujimori, 85, had been serving a 25-year prison sentence since 2007 for crimes against humanity, which was briefly interrupted between 2017 and 2018, when then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned him and months later the Justice revoked the benefit.
In that conviction, Fujimori was considered the direct perpetrator of malicious murder, aggravated kidnapping and serious injuries in two massacres committed in 1991 and 1992 by the Colina paramilitary group.
Despite being subjected to several trials for various crimes, most of which he was convicted, Peruvian legislation establishes that if a person receives more than one sentence, he must serve only the longest one.
In October 2018, a Supreme Court court declared the non-application of the pardon granted in 2017, so he was subsequently re-entered the prison.
Since then, judicial appeals have been filed seeking his new release.
In March 2022, the TC ordered to restore Fujimori’s pardon, after addressing a habeas corpus appeal, but in April, after actions carried out by the relatives of Fujimori’s victims, the Inter-American Court ordered the Peruvian State not to release the Ex leader.
Source: Ambito
