\n Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori, who spent 16 years in prison for crimes against humanity, died on Wednesday at the age of 86 in the capital Lima, his family said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"After a long battle with cancer, our father, Alberto Fujimori, has just departed to meet the Lord,\" his children Keiko, Hiro, Sachie and Kenji Fujimori wrote on the social media platform X.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We ask those who loved him to join us in praying for the eternal rest of his soul,\" they wrote, adding: \"Thank you for so much, Dad!\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Fujimori, who led Peru from 1990 to 2000, was released from prison on humanitarian grounds in December, two-thirds of the way through a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity during his rule.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sources close to his family told AFP earlier Wednesday that his health had deteriorated rapidly after completing treatment for tongue cancer in August.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was last seen in public on Thursday as he was leaving a clinic in the Miraflores district of Lima, where he said he had undergone a CT scan.\n<\/p>\n
\n The news of his death spread quickly on social media, where his supporters and detractors quarrelled over his legacy.\n<\/p>\n
\n Just a month earlier his daughter Keiko had announced that the rightwinger would run for president again in 2026.\n<\/p>\n
\n Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen expressed his condolences to the Fujimori family. \"We want his children and relatives to know we feel sorrow,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Adrianzen said he would talk to the family about what kind of funeral they want. It was not clear whether Fujimori would receive a state funeral.\n<\/p>\n
\n Fujimori, who was of Japanese heritage, was sent to prison in 2009 over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people, including a child, were killed in what he presented as anti-terrorist operations.\n<\/p>\n
\n In December 2017, then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Fujimori due to his ill health.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the Supreme Court later annulled the pardon and in January 2019, he was returned to jail from hospital.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Hostage crisis -\n<\/p>\n
\n He was released again in December 2023 after a court reinstated his pardon.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was adored and reviled in equal measures in Peru.\n<\/p>\n
\n His supporters credited him with saving the country from left-wing Shining Path and Tupac Amaru guerrillas and shoring up the economy.\n<\/p>\n
\n His opponents saw him as a power-thirsty autocrat.\n<\/p>\n
\n One of the most dramatic episodes of his presidency was a four-month hostage ordeal at the Japanese embassy in Lima in late 1996-early 1997.\n<\/p>\n
\n The standoff ended with Fujimori sending in commandos who rescued all 72 hostages and killed 14 rebels.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the later Fujimori years were dominated by a bribery scandal involving his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos.\n<\/p>\n
\n Fujimori went into self-imposed exile in Japan and memorably faxed in his resignation but was arrested years later in Chile and sent back to Peru for trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n His daughter Keiko has made three failed bids for the presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori, who spent 16 years in prison for crimes against humanity, died on Wednesday at the age of 86 in the capital Lima, his family said. \"After a long battle with cancer, our father, Alberto Fujimori, has just departed to meet the Lord,\" his children Keiko, Hiro, Sachie and Kenji Fujimori […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-135690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n