LIMA: Peru’s ex-president Alberto Fujimori said from his hospital bed Thursday that a return to prison would be a “death sentence,” the day after a court revoked a pardon for crimes against humanity.
Fujimori, 80, addressed a plea to Peru’s President Martin Vizcarra and the South American country’s judiciary in a video recorded at his bedside.
“Please do not kill me. If I return to prison my heart will not support it. It is too weak to go through the same thing again. Don’t sentence me to death. I can give no more.”
A court on Wednesday annulled a presidential pardon for Fujimori, ending more than nine months of freedom granted under the shock pardon issued by a previous president in December. However, immediately after his re-arrest Fujimori was admitted to a clinic with heart problems.
Fujimori was pardoned last December on humanitarian grounds, but critics said the move was in exchange for Fujimori’s son helping then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski avoid impeachment. Fujimori was 12 years into a 25-year jail sentence handed down for ordering two massacres by death squads between 1991 and 1992. He had ruled Peru with an iron fist between 1990 and 2000.