Peru to ask Chile for permission to try Fujimori for arms trafficking in the FARC

Peru to seek permission from Chile to try Alberto Fujimori in jail for alleged crime of illegally supplying arms to Colombia’s FARC, thus fulfilling the commitment made with the neighboring country during the extradition of the former president in 2007, the new left-wing government reported on Wednesday.

After 10 years in power, Fujimori left the presidency of Peru in 2000 and took refuge for five years in Japan, his second homeland, before moving in November 2005 to Chile, where he was arrested and extradited to his country in September 2007 to stand trial on five corruption cases and two human rights violations.

When Chile extradited him, Peru undertook to consult the Chilean authorities on the possibility of trying him in other pending cases. before the court. One such case is arms trafficking to the FARC, according to the Peruvian government.

“Se aprobó la resolución suprema mediante la cual accede to the solicitud de ampliación de extradición activa del ciudadano peruano Alberto Fujimori para ser extraditado de la República de Chile y ser procesado en Perú por la presunta comisión de delitos de suministro ilegal de arma y and others”, announced Wednesday the president of the Council of Ministers, Guido Bellido.

The request was approved after the request of the Ministry of Justice and is linked to the triangular sale organized from Lima of 10,000 Jordanian rifles in favor of the FARC guerrillas in 1999, when Fujimori was president.

“It is about having supplied weapons to the terrorist groups in Colombia, which are the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), when the former president Alberto Fujimori was in power”, Bellido explained at a press conference.

Fujimori is serving a 25-year sentence in a Peruvian prison for crimes against humanity committed in the fight against the Shining Path guerrillas and the MRTA.

The 83-year-old former president is the father of former right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, who denounced election fraud he lost to leftist Pedro Castillo last June.

The Chilean Supreme Court granted Fujimori’s extradition for two human rights cases and five corruption cases, but did not allow him for arms trafficking to Colombian FARC guerrillas, among others.

In September 2006, Peruvian court sentenced Fujimori’s right-hand man Vladimiro Montesinos to 20 years in prison for the case, while five other people were sentenced to 15 years.

The triangular sale of the 10,000 Jordanian rifles was scheduled between March and August 1999 through four flights to drop the weapons by parachute in the Colombian town of Barrancominas, on the border with Brazil.

According to the Colombian military, the shipment was paid for with cocaine and was negotiated by Brazilian drug dealer Luiz Fernando da Costa (‘Fernandinho Beira Mar’).

(With information from AFP)

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