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Peru\u2019s top court on Tuesday ordered former President Alberto Fujimori released from prison, where he is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations, defying an order by an international court that the South American country keep him behind bars.<\/p>\n
The court, Peru\u2019s Constitutional Tribunal, voted 3 to 1 to reaffirm its decision to instate a presidential pardon granted to Mr. Fujimori in 2017; the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had found the pardon violated the rights of his victims.<\/p>\n
Mr. Fujimori\u2019s lawyer told reporters that the former president would most likely be released from prison on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Some experts described the decision on Tuesday by Peru\u2019s top court as an example of institutional decay in a country that has undergone back-to-back political crises in recent years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cUntil now, we hadn\u2019t seen this attitude of the Peruvian State of open defiance, of saying basically that it\u2019s no big deal if we do not comply with our international obligations,\u201d said Pedro Gr\u00e1ndez, an expert on Peruvian constitutional law. <\/p>\n
Ahead of the court\u2019s decision, the Inter-American court reiterated its decision that Mr. Fujimori should not be released under the 2017 pardon. But President Dina Boluarte\u2019s center-right government is expected to abide by the decision of the Peruvian court.<\/p>\n
In its ruling, the Constitutional Tribunal said that if the international court believed that Peru was violating its international obligations, it should take the matter to the Organization of American States, the regional body that the Inter-American Court is part of.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe body that decides is the Constitutional Tribunal,\u201d the right-wing lawmaker Jos\u00e9 Cueto said after the verdict. \u201cThe Inter-American Court of Human Rights can say whatever it wants and do what it believes is appropriate, but we don\u2019t have to listen to it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The decision was the latest development in the roller coaster surrounding Mr. Fujimori\u2019s incarceration, and it came amid a surge in political scandals and concerns about impunity in the country of 33 million people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Fujimori, who was elected three decades ago as an anti-establishment outsider, came to power as hyperinflation ravaged Peru\u2019s economy and left-wing rebel groups carried out terror campaigns in which tens of thousands of people were killed.<\/p>\n
Two years after his election, Mr. Fujimori dissolved Congress with the support of the military, suspended the Constitution and began ruling as a dictator.<\/p>\n
His tenure was marked by a brutal government counterinsurgency campaign against leftist guerrillas. Dozens of civilians were subjected to extrajudicial killings at the hands of death squads that prosecutors said Mr. Fujimori had created. He abruptly resigned<\/a> by fax from his parents\u2019 homeland of Japan in 2000, after videos showing the country\u2019s spy master paying bribes were made public.<\/p>\n Mr. Fujimori was convicted in 2009 of human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity under international law in connection with the extrajudicial killings and kidnappings. He was sentenced by a Peruvian court to more than two decades in prison, and has served 16 years.<\/p>\n Mr. Fujimori\u2019s family says he has pulmonary fibrosis, a terminal illness. Now 85, he has been held in a special penitentiary for Peruvian presidents in Lima, along with two other former presidents, Mr. Castillo and Alejandro Toledo. Mr. Fujimori\u2019s daughter Keiko Fujimori is an influential opposition leader who narrowly lost last year\u2019s presidential election to Mr. Castillo, as well as two previous presidential runoffs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Mr. Fujimori<\/a> ahead of an impeachment vote that Mr. Kuczynski survived with the support of Mr. Fujimori\u2019s supporters in Congress. The pardon was annulled the following year, and Mr. Fujimori was ordered back to prison<\/a>. In 2022, the constitutional tribunal reinstated the pardon, but the Inter-American court ruled against it before Mr. Fujimori could be released. The Peruvian tribunal now claims that the court did not have the jurisdiction to make that decision.<\/p>\n After the decision, television stations showed a group of Mr. Fujimori\u2019s supporters celebrating outside the prison.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s very calm, enthusiastic and clinically stable,\u201d Mr. Fujimori\u2019s lawyer, Elio Riera, told journalists after speaking with him. \u201cHe\u2019s very hopeful about the fulfillment of this order.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlos Rivera, a lawyer who represents victims of the massacres that Mr. Fujimori was found guilty of perpetrating, said the tribunal\u2019s position moved the country toward \u201ca scenario of noncompliance with sentences of an international body.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n