Peru’s former president Alberto Fujimori asks a question during his testimony in court at a military base in Callo, Peru, March 15, 2018.
Martin Mejia/AP
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Martin Mejia/AP
Peru’s former president Alberto Fujimori asks a question during his testimony in court at a military base in Callo, Peru, March 15, 2018.
Martin Mejia/AP
LIMA, Peru – Peru’s Constitutional Court has ordered the immediate humanitarian release of former President Alberto Fujimori, 85, who was serving a 25-year prison sentence for killing 25 Peruvians in the 1990s.
The court ruled in favor of a 2017 amnesty that granted the ex-leader a humanitarian release, but it was later revoked.
In a ruling seen by The Associated Press, the court told the state prison agency to immediately release Fujimori “the same day.”
Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2009 on charges of human rights abuses. He is accused of masterminding the killing of 25 Peruvians by military death squads during his administration from 1990 to 2000, while the government fought Shining Path communist rebels.
Fujimori’s 2017 pardon, granted by then-President Pablo Kuczynski, was revoked under pressure from the US Court of Human Rights, and its status has been the subject of a legal battle ever since.
The Constitutional Court previously ordered a lower court in the southern city of Aika to release Fujimori, but that court refused to do so, arguing in a ruling last Friday that it lacked jurisdiction. It referred the case to the Constitutional Court.