After a 16-month trial including testimony from more than 100 witnesses and experts plus thousands of pages of documentary evidence and several hours of audiovisual recordings, a three-judge panel in April 2009 convicted former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori of massive human rights violations, sentencing him to 25 years in prison.
The verdict "is a genuine milestone in the struggle against impunity in the region," said OSI grantee Jo-Marie Burt, a political science professor from George Mason University who observed the proceedings. "It is the first time that a democratically elected head of state in Latin America has been found guilty of committing crimes against humanity. Peru is showing Latin America and the world that justice is possible."
Two Peruvian human rights organizations supported by OSI—the Association for Human Rights in Peru (APRODEH) and the Institute of Legal Defense (IDL)—provided attorneys for the prosecution team and offered legal counsel to the victims who provided key evidence.
At issue was whether Fujimori, who served as president from 1990 to 2000, was responsible for a series of assassinations by a death squad within the army intelligence service.
In the groundbreaking ruling, the Supreme Court justices rejected Fujimori's contention that he was a wartime president who acted only to defeat a brutal guerrilla insurgency. Instead the judges held that Fujimori designed and personally directed a two-tiered counterinsurgency strategy that combined a public campaign against guerrilla groups with a secret program of assassinations.
The court concluded that the Fujimori government then acted to cover up its involvement in the killings.
Fujimori's conviction—confirmed in January 2010 by Peru's Supreme Court—was a model of due process and transparency in a region where justice is too often tainted by charges of favoritism and corruption. Attorneys for the former president not only had ample time to present and cross-examine witnesses, they also submitted abundant documentary and audio-visual evidence. The Peruvian and international media had access to the proceedings, and TV and radio stations broadcasted much of it live.
To encourage informed debate, the Praxis Institute for Social Justice, another OSI grantee, published a bilingual blog (Spanish and English) to provide news updates, posts by international observers, legal analysis, victims' stories, and links to relevant documents. All four grantees collaborated during the process to inform the debate through conferences, legal and political analysis, media outreach, and international observation missions.