Peruvian court orders former President Fujimori's release from prison

BOGOTA, Colombia

Peru's Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the release of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses during his administration in the 1990s.

The country's top court granted a "habeas corpus" requesting the nullity of a judicial resolution that suspended a controversial 2017 pardon on the grounds that it had been granted illegally. The pardon was conceded by then President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who said he pardoned Fujimori because the former president suffered a heart condition.

Fujimori, 83, had been hospitalized on March 3, after suffering a heart attack at the police base where he had been serving his prison sentence since 2007 over two massacres carried out by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people were killed, including a child, in a supposed anti-terrorist operation.

An agronomist by profession and of Japanese descent, Fujimori came to power after he defeated Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. He remains a controversial figure in Peru, for he is admired by some who say he eliminated the Shining Path guerrilla group, and loathed by others who say his was an authoritarian government devoted to committing human rights violations.

Fujimori resigned in 2000 by fax after flying to Japan when leaked videotapes showed his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, bribing lawmakers with cash. In 2005, he flew to Chile, where he was arrested and extradited to Peru and was later prosecuted.

The former president was released in 2017 for a month before being jailed again to serve out his sentence for human rights abuses.

Fujimori's daughter Keiko Fujimori, who has run for president three times in Peru, said he struggles with poor health and deserves a humanitarian pardon.