Lima, Peru | AFP | Peru will request Chile to extend the extradition of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori (1999-2000), so that he can be prosecuted in a criminal proceeding for the thousands of “forced sterilizations” of women carried out between 1996 and 2000, the Judicial Branch reported. Peruvian.
Judge Rafael Martínez decided on Saturday to prosecute Fujimori and several former ministers in the case. The Peruvian judiciary later reported that, at the request of the former president’s defense, it was suspending the prosecution for not being within the extradition agreement between Santiago and Lima for which Fujimori returned to Peru in 2007.
The prosecutor in the case, Carmen Rosa Crisóstomo, indicated that the Public Ministry “will present the extension of the extradition request” to Chile in due course.
Martínez had affirmed last week that Fujimori – 83 years old and serving a 25-year prison sentence – could not be prosecuted for the “forced sterilizations” for now, as this cause was not included in the extradition request from Chile. granted for crimes of human rights violations and corruption.
At the same hearing, held virtually, the magistrate also decided to open criminal proceedings against “former ministers Eduardo Yong, Marino Costa and Alejandro Aguinaga, and Ulises Jorge Aguilar, as alleged perpetrators due to dominance in the organized apparatus of power.”
“They will be prosecuted for being the alleged perpetrators of the crime against life, body and health – serious injuries followed by death in the context of a serious violation of human rights.”
The criminal process of “forced sterilizations” has 1,317 plaintiffs and began in 2002, being archived and reopened several times.
Among the accused is Alejandro Aguinaga, Fujimori’s own doctor, former Minister of Health and current congressman for Fuerza Popular, the political party led by Keiko Fujimori, daughter and political heir of the former president.
It is estimated that some 270,000 poor Peruvians, many of them indigenous people who did not speak Spanish, underwent surgery to tie their fallopian tubes as part of the National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning that Fujimori carried out in his last four years in the power.
Most of the victims were indigenous from the provinces. One of them said that in 1997, when she was 19 years old, she went to the doctor’s office to vaccinate her baby and had her tubes tied.
The questioned program sought to reduce the birth rate to boost economic development. In these surgeries 18 women died, according to official data.
