Santiago, Chile – A smiling Alberto Fujimori left jail Thursday after almost seven months when Chile’s Supreme Court granted the former Peruvian president bail as he fights extradition to face corruption and human rights charges.
“Obviously, I am very satisfied, very happy,” he told reporters. “I am leaving in then same conditions as I arrived here.”
“I feel confident and I am going to be patient,” Fujimori, 67, added as he left the detention center where he was held under arrest since his surprise arrival here from Japan in November. He had said he was ending five years of exile in order to run in Peru’s presidential elections.
Fujimori’s lawyers posted the $2,880 bail set by the judge handling the extradition trial, allowing him to be freed. He left in a four-wheel-drive vehicle for a house rented in the upper-class Santiago neighborhood of Las Condes.
Small groups of supporters and foes were kept at a distance from the detention center.
A panel of the Chilean Supreme Court voted 4-1 to allow the former authoritarian leader to go free, but they prohibited him from leaving Chile, said the president of the court panel, Enrique Curi.
The judge handling the case, Orlando Alvarez, said it would be at least a month before a ruling on the extradition request is handed down.
Fujimori failed in two previous attempts to gain freedom on bail after the court said he was “a danger to society.” Lawyers for the Peruvian government argued he would try to flee the country if freed. But Fujimori attorney Alberto Veloso said his client was not a flight risk.
In Peru, word of the Chilean court’s decision was met with the deep division the former leader still elicits among his compatriots: His supporters expressed joy, while his foes reacted with disappointment and anger.
“This is freedom, even if he can’t leave Chile, he is a free man,” said Martha Chavez, a pro-Fujimori congresswoman and former presidential candidate. “The only thing he demands is respect for his rights and guarantees, and he has got that. If he had received the same guarantees from Peruvian authorities, he would have already come here.” Carmen Amaro, whose brother, Alberto, was killed in a notorious case of human rights abuse under Fujimori, said she was “indignant” over the bail ruling.
“This is not an act of justice, because in a way it gives him impunity,” she said.
But Peru’s Supreme Court President Walter Vasquez dismissed concerns that Chilean authorities would let Fujimori slip out of the country.
“It is necessary to have confidence in the Chilean authorities,” Vasquez said. “We have an expectation, a perspective that justice will prevail at the end of this process.” Peru so far has filed 12 formal charges against Fujimori, including sanctioning a paramilitary death squad accused of murdering 25 people, illegal phone tapping, diverting public funds to the intelligence service, bribing legislators and transferring $15 million to his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos.
Fujimori has called the charges against him an effort to block his political comeback.
He resigned the presidency via fax from Tokyo in 2000 amid a growing corruption scandal. He is the son of Japanese immigrants and holds Peruvian and Japanese citizenship.
