Image copyright Reuters Image caption Alberto Fujimori (pictured in March 2018) was pardoned less than a year ago

A court in Peru has reversed a pardon granted to the country's ex-president, Alberto Fujimori.

Fujimori was pardoned in December on health grounds, nine years after being found guilty of having links to a death squad and two massacres.

But a court ordered him back to jail after a victims' group won an appeal against the decision, made by then-president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Fujimori, who led Peru in the 1990s, will fight the ruling, his lawyer said.

His daughter Keiko, who leads the main opposition Popular Force party, told reporters the decision was "inhuman" and "unjust".

Most Peruvians had assumed Fujimori, now 80, would be in prison for the rest of his life after being sentenced to 25 years in 2009, having been convicted of ordering the killings of 25 people by a government-backed death squad during Peru's internal conflict.

But in December 2017, he was taken from prison to a hospital in the capital, Lima, because of health concerns; he was suffering from low blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythm.

Mr Kuczynski, who resigned in March over a vote-buying scandal, gave him a pardon the same month, prompting protests in Lima - even as Fujimori's supporters celebrated outside the city hospital where he was being treated.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Supporters gathered outside his home after the judge handed down his decision

The pardon was widely seen as part of a political deal. Mr Kuczynski had narrowly avoided impeachment, with the support of Fujimori's supporters, three days earlier.

Carlos Rivera, who is representing victims' family members, said the decision to reverse the pardon "re-establishes the right to justice for the family members of the victims".

Fujimori is admired by many in Peru for ruthlessly crushing Maoist rebels in the 1990s, ending a conflict that cost tens of thousands of lives.

But his critics say he is a corrupt dictator who was rightfully jailed for ordering the killings of innocent peasants.</s>Washington: A Peruvian Supreme Court judge has ordered the arrest of former president Alberto Fujimori after overturning a pardon he had received roughly nine months ago on health grounds.

Judge Hugo Nunez accepted a challenge against the pardon that had been filed by families of victims of 1992 death squad massacres directed by Fujimori. The judge ordered Fujimori be located and sent to jail, Peru's judiciary said via Twitter.

Fujimori, who led Peru from 1990 to 2000, was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2009 for commanding the killing of alleged terrorist sympathisers. Last December, former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski approved the 80-year-old's release after doctors said he was suffering from a "progressive, degenerative and incurable" illness and that jail endangered his life. Opposition lawmakers accused him of releasing Fujimori to avoid impeachment, a claim which Kuczynski denied.

Fujimori's defence would consider its options after reviewing the court's decision, lawyer Miguel Perez told local TV Canal N. Meanwhile, Fujimori's doctor and former health minister, Alejandro Aguinaga, said the ex-president was in his home in Lima receiving medical treatment for heart problems.</s>The following content is sourced from external partners. We cannot guarantee that it is suitable for the visually or hearing impaired.

This content was published on October 4, 2018 10:00 PM

FILE PHOTO: Former President of Peru Alberto Fujimori attends a trial as a witness at the navy base in Callao, Peru March 15, 2018. Picture taken through a window. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo/ File Photo

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru's former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori on Thursday appealed to current President Martín Vizcarra and to judges not to return him to prison because his "heart would not cope."

The former president, 80, spoke from a private clinic where he is undergoing treatment for heart disease and under police guard, in a video address aired on Peru's independent Canal N cable television station.

"I want to ask the president of the republic and members of the judiciary one thing only: Please, don't kill me," Fujimori said. "If I return to prison, my heart will not cope. It is too weak to go through the same thing again."

The former strongman also urged the current authorities not to use him as a "political weapon" since he had "no forces to resist."

Fujimori was transported by ambulance to a local clinic on Wednesday after a judge annulled a pardon granted to him last year and ordered his immediate capture and return to prison over human rights abuse allegations.

The ruling by Supreme Court Judge Hugo Nunez marked the latest reversal in fortunes for Fujimori, an agricultural engineer who rose to the presidency on a populist platform in 1990 and a decade later resigned by fax from his parents' homeland of Japan as accusations against him mounted.

Following his extradition to Peru in 2007, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for commanding death squads that massacred civilians in a counterinsurgency campaign during his right-wing government. He was later found guilty of corruption.

Former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski granted Fujimori a humanitarian pardon on Christmas Eve, three days after Kuczynski narrowly survived an impeachment vote with the help of Fujimori's supporters in Congress.

Fujimori's attorney Miguel Perez on Wednesday filed an appeal and requested a suspension of the arrest order, on the grounds of his client's failing health.</s>A Peruvian court on Wednesday annulled ex-president Alberto Fujimori’s pardon and ordered the 80-year old’s immediate arrest, officials said.

“The judge issued the arrest and detention orders against former president Fujimori so that he may be re-integrated into the prison establishment,” said the state judiciary in a statement.

Fujimori was pardoned by presidential decree last December. He was 12 years into a 25-year jail sentence handed down to him over his ordering of two massacres by death squads between 1991 and 1992.

The pardon, issued by then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski before he was himself brought down by a corruption scandal, triggered a wave of protests by human rights organisations and by victims of Fujimori’s crackdown.</s>LIMA: A Peruvian court on Wednesday annulled ex-president Alberto Fujimori's pardon for crimes against humanity and ordered the 80-year-old's immediate arrest, officials said.

The South American country's justice department said in a statement that the Supreme Court had "issued the arrest and detention orders against former president Fujimori so that he may be re-integrated into the prison establishment."

He was pardoned last December on humanitarian grounds, but critics said the move was in exchange for Fujimori's son helping then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski avoid impeachment.

Fujimori was 12 years into a 25-year jail sentence handed down for ordering two massacres by death squads between 1991 and 1992.

"This decision is inhuman, it's unjust," said his daughter Keiko, leader of the main opposition Popular Force party and seen by many as the heir to Fujimori's political dynasty.

"Today is the saddest day of our lives, it's painful," a tearful Keiko told reporters, adding that she had yet to speak to her father since the court decision.

One of Fujimori's lawyers, Miguel Perez, said on Chile's RPP radio the decision was subject to appeal.

The pardon, issued by Kuczynski before he was himself brought down by a corruption scandal, triggered a wave of protests by human rights organizations and by victims of Fujimori's crackdown.

Fujimori, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, has been living in Lima but has been hospitalized four times since his release last December.

After his arrest Wednesday, he was admitted to a clinic for tests after experiencing a drop in blood pressure and an accelerated heart beat, his doctor, Alejandro Aguinaga, told reporters.

Victims of Fujimori's crackdown had petitioned the Inter-American Court to demand a judicial review of the process that led to the pardon.

Carlos Rivera, a lawyer for the victims, said the decision to annul the pardon was justified.

"Kuczynski's pardon to Alberto Fujimori has no legal value and therefore he has to return to prison for irregularities in the process," he said.

Kuczynski had justified the pardon on humanitarian grounds, given Fujimori's well-documented ill-health. But the scandal-tainted president had only days earlier survived an impeachment vote thanks to the abstention of a group of lawmakers led by Fujimori's son Kenji.

This lead critics to say the pardon was obviously a quid-pro-quo, the price Kuczynski paid for what proved to be a temporary political survival.

"International standards in the humanitarian pardon were not met," Rivera said.

Alejandro Aguinaga, Fujimori's doctor, expressed shock at the news. "We see that in Peru nothing is respected. The pardon of president Fujimori was a constitutional action," Aguinaga told Radio RPP.

Fujimori has had a number of operations as part of a long-running battle with tongue cancer. His most recent hospitalization was in August, for an irregular heartbeat.

He has been working on a memoir about his decade in power (1990-2000), a period marked by corruption but also by a fight against guerrillas and terrorism.

"I have reached 80 bearing the marks of the years, with all the shocks of political life, the enormous satisfactions and the profound regrets," he wrote in a message to AFP around his birthday in July.

"In the few years I have left," Fujimori explained in his handwritten text, "I will dedicate myself to three objectives: bringing my family together, improving my health to the extent possible, and striking a serene and balanced equilibrium in my life."

However, Fujimori has been unable to reconcile his daughter Keiko, 43, with her younger brother Kenji, who leads a rival faction of her party, to end a political schism which could see the two face off in the 2021 presidential elections.

The charge of crimes against humanity stemmed in part from the killings or disappearances of scores of civilians -- allegedly by a shadowy squad of military officers -- during Peru's bloody struggle against Maoist rebels.

The ex-ruler is revered and despised in equal measure in Peru. Admirers laud him for dragging the country's economy into the modern era and defeating the Shining Path guerrilla movement.</s>A chamber of Peru's Supreme Court on Wednesday revoked the pardon granted last year to disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori and ordered his return to prison.

Judge Hugo Nuñez Julca considered there to be a valid basis for a civil request to nullify the humanitarian pardon Fujimori received on Dec. 24, 2017, the court said on Twitter.</s>A chamber of Peru's Supreme Court revoked on Wednesday the pardon granted last year to disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori and ordered his return to prison.</s>Peru’s Supreme Court has overturned a medical pardon for former President Alberto Fujimori and ordered the strongman be returned to jail to serve out a long sentence for human rights abuses.

Former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Fujimori on humanitarian grounds last Christmas Eve in what was widely seen as an attempt to stave off impeachment by courting favour with Fujimori’s allies in Congress.

Almost from the outset, the ruling was slammed by human rights groups as a “pact of impunity”, while the Inter-American Court on Human Rights had also demanded that Peru review its legality.

Keiko Fujimori, daughter of Peru’s former President Alberto Fujimori, cries as she speaks with reporters (Martin Mejia/AP)

The high court in its 224-page decision said the pardon was unlawful because Fujimori’s crimes are considered crimes against humanity, and therefore cannot be pardoned under Peruvian and international law.

The presiding magistrate in the case ordered the 80-year-old Fujimori be captured immediately so he can serve out the remaining 14 years of a 25-year sentence for his role in the killing of several civilians, including an eight-year-old boy, during raids by an anti-communist army unit created by his government.

Two police officers entered the rented mansion in Lima where Fujimori has been living since his release to verify his whereabouts.

His lawyer said he would abide by the ruling while appealing against the decision.

“Today is one of the saddest days in my life,” a weeping Keiko Fujimori, the former president’s daughter and current leader of the conservative Popular Force party, told a group of journalists outside her father’s residence.

Fujimori, who governed from 1990 to 2000, remains a polarising figure in Peru.

Some Peruvians laud him for defeating the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement, while others loathe him for human rights violations carried out under his government.

A former mathematics professor, Fujimori was a political outsider when he emerged from obscurity to win Peru’s 1990 presidential election over writer Mario Vargas Llosa.

Peru was being ravaged by runaway inflation and guerrilla violence when he took office.

He quickly rebuilt the economy with mass privatisations of state industries.

Defeating the fanatical Shining Path rebels took longer but his fight won him broad-based support.

His presidency collapsed just as dramatically as his rise to power.

After briefly shutting down Congress and putting himself into a third term, Fujimori fled the country in disgrace in 2000 after leaked videotapes showed his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, bribing politicians.

Fujimori went to Japan, his parents’ homeland, and famously sent in his resignation by fax.

Five years later, he stunned supporters and enemies alike when he flew to neighbouring Chile, where he was arrested and extradited to Peru.

Fujimori’s goal was to run for Peru’s presidency again in 2006, but instead he went to trial.

Mr Kuczynski said he was pardoning Fujimori because he suffered a heart condition made worse by prison conditions.</s>LIMA (REUTERS) - A Peruvian judge on Wednesday (Oct 3) annulled a presidential pardon granted to former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori late last year and ordered his immediate capture and return to prison.

Fujimori, 80, had been cleared of convictions for human rights abuses by former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Christmas Eve, three days after Kuczynski narrowly survived an impeachment vote with the help of Fujimori's supporters.

News cameras waited outside the sprawling house in Lima where Fujimori has been living since becoming a free man, less than halfway into a 25-year sentence for commanding death squads that massacred civilians under his 1990-2000 right-wing government.

Fujimori's lawyer and his daughter, opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, said in broadcast comments that Fujimori would appeal the decision.

Kuczynski had cited Fujimori's ailing health for the pardon, saying he did not want a former president to die in prison.

But the pardon has been widely seen as part of a political deal and the family members of the victims of the death squad killings argued it had been granted illegally.

"This re-establishes the right to justice for the family members of the victims," said Carlos Rivera, an attorney for family members of the victims.

Kuczynski, who turned 80 on Wednesday, resigned due to a graft scandal in March and is now under investigation by public prosecutors in connection with Fujimori's pardon.

Alejandro Aguinaga, Fujimori's doctor, said on local broadcaster Canal N that Fujimori was at home but could not move because of a cardiac problem.</s>A Peruvian court on Wednesday annulled ex-president Alberto Fujimori's pardon for crimes against humanity and ordered the 80-year-old's immediate arrest, officials said.

The South American country's justice department said in a statement that the Supreme Court had "issued the arrest and detention orders against former president Fujimori so that he may be re-integrated into the prison establishment."

Fujimori was pardoned by presidential decree last December. He was 12 years into a 25-year jail sentence handed down to him over his ordering of two massacres by death squads between 1991 and 1992.

The pardon, issued by then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski before he was himself brought down by a corruption scandal, triggered a wave of protests by human rights organizations and by victims of Fujimori's crackdown.

Fujimori, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, has been living in Lima but has been hospitalized four times since his release last December.

Victims of Fujimori's crackdown had petitioned the Inter-American Court to demand a judicial review of the process that led to the pardon.

Carlos Rivera, a lawyer for the victims, said the decision to annul the pardon was justified.

"Kuczynski's pardon to Alberto Fujimori has no legal value and therefore he has to return to prison for irregularities in the process," he said.

Kuczynski had justified the pardon on humanitarian grounds, given Fujimori's well-documented ill-health.

"International standards in the humanitarian pardon were not met," Rivera said.

Alejandro Aguinaga, Fujimori's doctor, expressed shock at the news. "We see that in Peru nothing is respected. The pardon of president Fujimori was a constitutional action," Aguinaga told Chilean radio RPP.

Fujimori has had a number of operations as part of a long-running battle with tongue cancer. His most recent hospitalization was in August, for an irregular heartbeat.

He has been working on a memoir about his decade in power (1990-2000), a period marked by corruption but also by a fight against guerrillas and terrorism.

"I have reached 80 bearing the marks of the years, with all the shocks of political life, the enormous satisfactions and the profound regrets," he wrote in a message to AFP around his birthday in July.

"In the few years I have left," Fujimori explained in his handwritten text, "I will dedicate myself to three objectives: bringing my family together, improving my health to the extent possible, and striking a serene and balanced equilibrium in my life."

However, Fujimori has been unable to reconcile his daughter Keiko, 43, who heads the right-wing Popular Force party, with her 39-year-old brother Kenji, who leads a rival faction of the party, to end a political schism which could see the two face off in the 2021 presidential elections.

The charge of crimes against humanity stemmed in part from the killings or disappearances of scores of civilians -- allegedly by a shadowy squad of military officers -- during Peru's bloody struggle against Maoist rebels.

The ex-ruler is revered and despised in equal measure in Peru. Admirers laud him for dragging the country's economy into the modern era and defeating the Shining Path guerrilla movement.
A Peruvian court reverses the pardon granted to former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and orders that Fujimori must be returned to prison.