Peru: Supreme Court Delays Vote on Fujimori Appeal By 48 Hours

The Peruvian Supreme Court Justice will put former President Alberto Fujimori’s case appeal to a vote Wednesday after hearing testimonies from the defense and prosecution Monday.

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Jorge Luis Salas Arenas, president of the Special Criminal Chamber investigating the case, announced that the decision will be announced within the legal time frame.

Fujimori is appealing the 25-year prison sentence he received for authorizing the massacres of Barrios Altos and La Cantuta which lead to the death of 24 people who were falsely accused of enemies of the state and killed.

If the three judges vote in favor of the defense request, it would validate the 2017 pardon granted by ex-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to Fujimori. If he loses the vote, he will return to prison to serve out the remaining 14 years of his sentence.

Fujimori has also been largely criticized for authorizing thousands of forced sterilizations conducted in impunity targeting the poorer classes in rural Peru throughout his administration.

Between 1996 and 2001, 272,028 of Peru’s women and 22,004 men were allegedly forced under the knife during the Fujimori administration, the Ombudsman’s Office reports. However, the true figure is unknown as the majority of surgeries were conducted on impoverished, Quechua-speaking Indigenous people living rural sectors, although, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) believes it to be extremely high.

Over 2,160 women have openly denounced the sterilization, saying they were carried out without their consent and without being properly informed as part of the National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning which was being introduced at that time.