Peru: Former President Alberto Fujimori Dies at 86

Alberto Fujimori, who ruled Peru with an iron fist between 1990 and 2000 and spent the last years of his life in prison for corruption and crimes against humanity, died Wednesday in Lima with his family at the age of 86.

“After a long battle with cancer, our father, Alberto Fujimori, has just gone to meet the Lord. We ask those who loved him to accompany us in prayer for the eternal rest of his soul. Thank you for everything, Dad!”, announced his children Keiko, Hiro, Sachie and Kenji Fujimori.

The Presidency of the Republic confirmed “the sad news”, presenting its “sincere condolences to the family”. “May God rest his soul and may he rest in peace”, concluded the presidential statement.

“We will coordinate with the family to find out their wishes regarding the funeral of the former president,” said the ministerial chief of staff.

The former leader, born in Japan, was released in December by order of the Constitutional Court “for humanitarian reasons”, despite opposition from the Inter-American justice system, after spending 16 years in a prison in eastern Lima.

He was serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity, including two massacres of civilians committed by an army squadron as part of the fight against the Shining Path Maoist guerrillas in the early 1990s.

Former Peruvian President (1990-2000), Alberto Fujimori, appears before the court for a hearing in Lima, November 7, 2013 © AFP – Ernesto BENAVIDES

The former president, nicknamed “El Chino” (the Chinese), who deeply divided the country, has been hospitalized several times in recent years. He was diagnosed in May with a malignant tumor on his tongue, where he had had a cancerous lesion for more than 27 years. In 2018, Mr. Fujimori had publicly announced a diagnosis of a lung tumor.

His health had deteriorated rapidly in recent days, although he had finished radiotherapy on his mouth in August, sources close to the family told AFP.

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A Catholic priest arrived Wednesday afternoon at his home in the San Borja neighborhood of Lima, where he lived with his eldest daughter, Keiko Fujimori.

Mr. Fujimori was last seen in public on September 5 leaving a clinic in the Miraflores neighborhood where he had undergone a CT scan, as he himself revealed.

– “Authoritarian and populist” –

A follower of neoliberalism, Alberto Fujimori was a “precursor in Latin America of a style of politics,” political analyst Augusto Alvarez told AFP. According to him, the former president, who burst onto the public scene with his unexpected electoral victory over the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, future Nobel Prize winner for literature, promoted an “authoritarian and populist” model that has been reproduced in many other countries, both by left-wing and right-wing movements.

Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori inspects the guard of honour in the Plaza de Armas in Lima on July 28, 1995 © AFP – Jaime RAZURI

The former president leaves a mixed image in the country. For some, he is the man who boosted the country's economic growth with his ultra-liberal policies, and successfully fought the Shining Path (Maoist) and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Guevarist) guerrillas.

Others remember above all the corruption scandals and his authoritarian methods that earned him his conviction.

His daughter Keiko Fujimori took up his political torch but failed three times in the second round of the presidential election. On July 14, the leader of the country's main right-wing party announced that her father would run in the 2026 presidential election, not knowing whether she would be able to participate because, prosecuted for money laundering, the prosecutor's office has requested a 30-year prison sentence for her.

Peru approved a law in early August declaring crimes against humanity committed before 2002 statute-barred, which could have benefited Alberto Fujimori.

Approved despite a resolution by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in mid-June calling for the legislative process to be suspended, it will benefit hundreds of other officers accused of abuses during the internal conflict of the 1980s and 1990s that left some 69,000 dead and 21,000 missing.

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