Polarising Latin American chief had been launched from jail in December on humanitarian grounds.
Alberto Fujimori, the polarising former chief of Peru who was credited with stabilising the Latin American nation’s financial system earlier than being jailed for human rights abuses, has died on the age of 86, his household has introduced.
Fujimori’s daughter Keiko Fujimori mentioned the previous president had died following a protracted battle with most cancers.
“We ask those that liked him to affix us in praying for the everlasting remainder of his soul,” Keiko Fujimori mentioned in a put up on X on Wednesday. “Thanks for a lot, Dad!”.
Fujimori, a former agricultural engineer and college professor, emerged from obscurity to put second in Peru’s 1990 election towards institution favorite Mario Vargas Llosa earlier than beating his rival in a subsequent run-off vote.
Throughout his decade-long presidency, Fujimori gained plaudits for vanquishing hyperinflation, spurring financial progress and cracking down on the Maoist Shining Path insurgent group.
However the son of Japanese immigrants additionally attracted criticism for consolidating energy by means of undemocratic means and undermining Peru’s establishments and rule of legislation.
After briefly shutting down Congress and the courts, Fujimori fled Peru in 2000 following the emergence of footage displaying his intelligence chief bribing legislators.
From exile in Japan, the place Fujimori held citizenship, he famously submitted his resignation by fax machine.
In 2005, Fujimori travelled to Chile in a bid to mount a political comeback however was extradited to Peru to face trial for atrocities carried out by a navy unit early in his tenure.
In 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in jail after being deemed liable for the bloodbath of 25 folks, together with a toddler, by dying squads performing within the authorities’s title.
Peru’s high court docket ordered his launch in December, citing humanitarian grounds.
In July, Keiko Fujimori had introduced that her father deliberate to hunt a fourth time period as president in 2026.
