Peruvian Prime Minister Compares Fujimori to Hitler

Lima, 18 Mar Peru's prime minister, jurist Aníbal Torres, compared former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler (1933-1945) on Friday when he ruled on Thursday's decision by the Constitutional Court (TC) to reinstate the pardon he received to the former ruler in 2017. “We must acknowledge your good works (Fujimori's), but I give you Germany as an example, wasn't it Hitler who turned Germany into a world power? It was him, but he was condemned not only by the Germans afterwards, but all over the world, for the great crimes he committed,” Torres declared during a national meeting of municipal commonwealths in Cusco. At another time, the president of the Council of Ministers expressed solidarity with the relatives of the Barrios Altos massacres (1991) and La Cantuta (1992), for which Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity. “How is it that we can tolerate who allowed, for example, students from La Cantuta to be kidnapped, these students mistreated, burned, quartered and buried clandestinely?” , Torres lamented, indignant. The chief of the ministerial cabinet was one of the members of the Executive to most strongly criticize the TC's ruling the day before, when he assured that this body “must disappear” because it goes “against the legal system in Peru” and takes a decision that, in his opinion, “violates the human rights of all Peruvians.” At the opposite extreme is the questioned Minister of Health, Hernán Condori, who on Thursday declared that, as a “democratic country”, Peru must abide by the rulings of “the final instances”. “If this is the decision of the Constitutional Court, we must respect it,” he said. The country's highest constitutional body confirmed on Thursday that the deciding vote of its president, Augusto Ferrero, decided the nullity of the judicial decision that suspended the pardon granted to Fujimori in 2017, after the vote on the “habeas corpus” appeal that requested that measure was tied by three votes in favor and three against. Thus, the TC declared that an appeal brought by a lawyer from the department of Ica against the Supreme Court ruling that in 2018 rescinded the pardon granted to Fujimori on December 24, 2017 by Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018). This pardon is being investigated by the courts, as the Prosecutor's Office considers that it was the product of a negotiation between Kuczynski and Fujimori's youngest son, Kenji, who was then a congressman, to have Fujimorist legislators vote against a request for the removal of the then-president. Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years' imprisonment as a mediate author (dominated by the fact) of the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres, committed in 1991 and 1992, respectively, by the covert military group Colina, as well as for the kidnappings of a businessman and a journalist following the 1992 coup d'état. CHIEF csr/gdl/laa