Fujimori's Trip To Chile First Step Towards Peru Return

by Angel Paez

(IPS) LIMA -- Authorities in Peru believe that former president Alberto Fujimori will use his two-month stay in Chile -- the estimated duration of his extradition trial on charges of human rights abuses and corruption -- to organize a campaign aimed at allowing him to run for president.

Jan. 9 is the deadline for candidates to register for the June 2006 presidential elections in Peru.

The Peruvian Congress and Constitutional Court banned Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000, from running for public office until 2010. Nevertheless, it appears that the former president believes his presence in or near Peru will inspire an upsurge in popular support, leading to public pressure that would force the national electoral authorities into accepting his candidacy.

The former president still has a devoted core of followers in Peru, where opinion polls show he is significantly more popular than President Alejandro Toledo.

Fujimori, who arrived in Chile on Sunday after living as a fugitive from justice in Japan for almost five years, likely chose the neighboring South American nation for a number of reasons.

Foremost among these is the fact that on three different occasions, the Chilean courts have turned down Peru's requests for the extradition of close associates of Fujimori and his former security chief Vladimiro Montesinos when they sought refuge in Chile.

In addition, he can now count on the support of Daniel Borobio, his election campaign manager from 1990 to 2000. Borobio, who is from Argentina but is living in Chile, worked closely with Fujimori and Montesinos, as demonstrated by dozens of videotapes secretly shot by the latter.

Also in Santiago is Eduardo Calmell del Solar, the former owner of the Expreso newspaper and the Cable Canal de Noticias (CCN) cable news network. Both media outlets were placed at the service of Fujimori thanks to a $2 million bribe paid to their owner by Montesinos, a transaction for which there is documentary proof.

Fujimori's third source of support in Chile is the former owner of the Andina de Television station, Julio Vera Abad, whom Montesinos filmed while paying him $350,000 to have a news program critical of the Fujimori regime taken off the air.

But there is perhaps an even more important antecedent. In January of this year, two other Fujimori and Montesinos collaborators, the former owners of America Television, Jose Enrique and Jose Francisco Crousillat, who were facing an extradition trial in Argentina at the time, tried to escape to Chile and were detained at the border.

The Crousillat brothers had also been filmed by Montesinos while he handed over $10 million in return for their support for Fujimori's re-election campaign.

After their capture, Toledo phoned Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and asked him to deport the Crousillat brothers to Peru. Lagos turned down the request, and they were instead sent back to Argentina.

Sources from the Attorney General's Office -- where a special team of state prosecutors is handling the Fujimori-Montesinos cases -- told IPS they had predicted that the former president would choose Chile for his attempt to return to Peru, precisely because the Chilean courts had failed to comply with extradition requests for his former collaborators.

In any event, they say, Fujimori is confident that the Chilean judicial authorities will take so long to reach a decision on the request for extradition from the Peruvian anti-corruption court that he will have ample opportunity to build up his image among his country's voters.

"Running a campaign from Tokyo is not the same as doing it from Santiago," said the sources at the Attorney General's Office. "Now he has his collaborators in Peru close at hand, ready to pave the way for his return."

On Sunday night, when they discovered that the Chilean authorities had not detained Fujimori upon arrival, but instead allowed him to head for the Marriott Hotel where he had reserved a room a month in advance, the Peruvian government swiftly requested his arrest, with the ultimate goal of having him extradited.

IPS obtained a copy of the letter sent by Lima to Santiago, asking for Fujimori to be arrested to stand trial for the crimes of homicide, grievous bodily harm, forced disappearance, illicit association with criminal intent, embezzlement and falsification of public documents.

It was only after the letter reached Santiago that Chilean Supreme Court magistrate Orlando Alvarez issued an arrest warrant for Fujimori, who was taken into custody early Monday morning and will be held in Chile until the Peruvian judicial authorities present an extradition file with evidence to back up the charges.

In the close to five years since Fujimori took refuge in Japan, Peruvian authorities have issued two extradition requests, and are currently in the process of translating another seven into Japanese. The former leader is facing a total of 21 criminal charges.

In addition, there are another nine charges against Fujimori pending approval by a congressional commission, five of them related to human rights violations committed during his regime.

The challenge now facing the Peruvian justice system is to organize the evidence in the most important case: presidential consent and approval for the crimes committed by the so-called Colina Group, a death squad made up of military intelligence agents and directed by Montesinos.

Three former members of the group testified in court that Fujimori and Montesinos were fully informed of all of the crimes that they planned and perpetrated.

The news that Fujimori was in Chile took Toledo by surprise, and led him to call an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Justice Minister Alejandro Tudela, Interior Minister Romulo Pizarro, and the head of the Fujimori-Montesinos prosecution team, Antonio Maldonado.

Government sources told IPS that after a flurry of phone calls to Chile, Toledo and his advisers agreed to immediately issue an extradition request, and to officially state that the case was strictly a police matter and not a political dispute between the two nations.

Toledo then called Mexican President Vicente Fox to ask why Fujimori had not been detained in Tijuana, where the private plane on which he was traveling made a stopover en route to Santiago.

According to the sources, Fox ensured Toledo that he would investigate.

As the details of Fujimori's trip to Chile came to light, it became more and more obvious that this was a carefully organized operation.

For example, Luis Silva Santisteban presented himself to the Chilean media as the former president's spokesperson in Chile.

Silva Santisteban was one of Montesinos' aides in the National Intelligence Service, the Fujimori regime's powerful secret police apparatus, and directed the expulsion of 117 foreign diplomats several weeks after Fujimori dissolved Congress on April 5, 1992. He was later rewarded with an ambassador's post in Germany.

While in Japan, Fujimori did everything possible to dissociate himself from the illegal activities undertaken by Montesinos, who is currently in jail and facing trial in Peru. But Silva Santisteban's presence in Chile clearly demonstrates that the former president and his erstwhile security chief shared the same associates.

Another of the organizers of Fujimori's trip to Chile is German Kruger, a wealthy businessman and former mayor of Miraflores (an upscale district on the outskirts of Lima). Kruger was the deputy to Mayor Luis Bedoya de Vivanco at the time the latter was caught taking bribes from Montesinos.

Based on the evidence, it appears that everyone involved in Fujimori's trip to Chile has a criminal record or a controversial past.