Peru to present Fujimori report within days

SANTIAGO, Feb 1 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Peru's final report on Alberto Fujimori's extradition includes new evidence linking the former president to human rights abuses and will be handed to a Chilean judge by Monday, the chief Peruvian prosecutor said.

Peru wants Fujimori to stand trial in Lima on human rights charges including allegations of massacres to crush Peru's Shining Path and other leftist rebels in the 1990s. It also accuses him of embezzlement.

Fujimori denies the charges.

"We've practically finished the report, in which there is irrefutable proof (against Fujimori)," said Carlos Briceno, Peru's special corruption prosecutor.

The Chilean lawyers working with the Peruvian state will hand in the report containing the new evidence by Monday, Briceno said in a telephone interview during a visit to the Chilean capital Santiago.

The 68-year-old former president, who is of Japanese descent, fled Peru for Japan in 2000 to avoid prosecution when his second term in office collapsed in a huge corruption scandal.

In November 2005, he flew from Japan to Chile, apparently to try to launch a political comeback in Peru, but was arrested on an international warrant.

He has been in Chile since then. Under the terms of his bail, he cannot leave the country but his day-to-day movements are not restricted.

The investigative stage of the extradition case ended last month and presiding Judge Orlando Alvarez is now considering evidence. He will be given a report from Fujimori's defence lawyers as well as the one from the Peruvian state.

Briceno said he expected Alvarez to issue a verdict by May.

He said he was worried Fujimori might try to flee Chile if the ruling went against him.

"He is abiding by the rules that have been set for him. He hasn't crossed the line," Briceno said. "But we're worried. If the extradition goes ahead, we would ask as a security measure for his bail to be revoked in favour of, say, house arrest."

Peru's case against Fujimori hinges above all on the evidence of two massacres.

Late last year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica issued a verdict in one of the cases, finding the Peruvian state responsible for the murder of 10 people in 1992.

Briceno said the report includes evidence from this case.

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