Peruvian former president Alberto Fujimori, who oversaw economic growth in the 1990s but was later jailed for human rights abuses, died at the age of 86, according to Reuters.
Earlier in the day, close colleagues visited him and said he was in a critical condition. His daughter Keiko Fujimori wrote on X:
After a long battle with cancer, our father… has just departed to meet the Lord.
Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, was a little-known agricultural university chancellor when he was elected to office in 1990. He overcame hyperinflation that put millions of Peruvians out of work, privatised dozens of state-owned companies, and lowered trade tariffs. This made Peru one of Latin America’s most stable economies.
However, shortly after he won a third election in 2000 by amending the constitution, video footage emerged of his top adviser and head of the spy service, Vladimiro Montesinos, handing out money to bribe politicians. Fujimori fled to Japan. He resigned by fax from Tokyo and then unsuccessfully campaigned for a seat in Japan’s Senate.
Montesinos was later captured in Venezuela and imprisoned after being found guilty on hundreds of videos he had recorded showing him distributing cash bribes to politicians, business, and media executives.
Return to Politics
Fujimori was safe in Japan. He had dual citizenship and Japan does not extradite its citizens. Many were shocked when he decided to return to Peru in 2005, hoping for forgiveness and a return to politics. Instead, he was detained during a transfer to Chile, extradited to Peru in 2007. In 2009, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Since his imprisonment, Fujimori’s public appearances have been limited to visits to the hospital, where he often appeared dishevelled and unwell. While detractors dismissed his health complaints as a ploy to get out of prison, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski briefly pardoned Fujimori in 2017.
A few months later, however, Kuczynski was impeached and the pardon was cancelled by Peru’s highest constitutional court. As a result, Fujimori was sent back to a special prison that held him, but not other prisoners.
The court reinstated the pardon in December 2023, releasing the ailing Fujimori, who suffered from stomach ulcers, hypertension, and tongue cancer. In May 2024, Fujimori announced that he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumour.
In July, Keiko stated that her father planned to run for president again in the 2026 election.
