Murder trial urged for ex-leader

The Advertiser From correspondents in Lima 15may03

A JUDGE in Peru's highest court has recommended exiled former President Alberto Fujimori face a murder trial for allegedly authorising two massacres carried out by paramilitary death squads a decade ago.

Supreme Court Justice Jose Luis Lecaros had made his recommendation in a report filed after a year-long investigation into the massacres during Fujimori's rule, his legal assistant Jorge Medina said today.

Under Peru's criminal law, a Supreme Court bench must now decide on Lecaros' recommendation.

Medina said the court would not make that decision until Fujimori returned or was extradited to Peru and could face a trial.

Fujimori fled to Japan in November 2000 amid a corruption scandal that toppled his decade-long regime.

Japan has so far refused to extradite him, and Peruvian prosecutors are piling up charges against the former president in hopes of pressuring Tokyo to turn him over.

Lecaros said he found evidence supporting allegations that Fujimori gave the leader of the so-called Colina Group hit squad the go-ahead to murder suspected sympathisers of the now nearly defunct Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement.

The Colina Group killed 15 poor people during a raid on a cookout in Lima's squalid Barrios Altos district in 1991. A year later, the group murdered nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University.

For years, human rights groups have suspected that Fujimori and his ex-spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, masterminded the killings.

In March, Interpol placed Fujimori on its most wanted list, issuing a "red alert" for his arrest on a Peruvian warrant charging him with death squad murders.

Peru's judiciary has opened six cases against the fallen president, including authorising the death squad murders, abandoning his office, corruption and bribery.

Fujimori denies any wrongdoing. On his "From Tokyo" website, he claims to be the target of political persecution and says the accusations lack proof and credible witnesses.

Montesinos slipped out of Peru in 2000, but was captured in Venezuela in 2001. He has been in a high security prison since and faces more than 70 trials on charges ranging from corruption to murder.