Peru's Fujimori to Be Tried for Murder

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Peru's Fujimori to Be Tried for Murder
By MONTE HAYES | Associated Press Writer
1:20 PM EDT, October 20, 2007

LIMA, Peru - As Peru heads into the most sensational trial in its history, the country is being taken back 16 years to the night when hooded men stormed a barbecue in a Lima tenement courtyard and machine-gunned the crowd, killing 15 people including an 8-year-old boy.

It was November 1991 -- just a year into the 10-year presidency of Alberto Fujimori -- and a dirty war was raging between government forces and Maoist rebels calling themselves the Shining Path. The police investigation of the Lima massacre went nowhere, but many Peruvians assumed the targets at the barbecue were Shining Path supporters, and some felt a firm response to the murderous rebel movement was just what the country needed.

The questions didn't go away, however, and Fujimori, who had initially won sweeping popularity for his economic measures and war on the Shining Path, gradually lost support until he was forced into exile in Japan, his ancestral homeland.

Now he's back, facing a trial next month at which the barbecue massacre will loom large. Prosecutors will claim the attackers were a military death squad, that they hit the wrong party -- and that the action was authorized by Fujimori.




Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-peru-president-on-trial,0,328121.story

[High Plains]

1. Sometimes, the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow. n/t

[catnhatnh]

2. Read It Busholes, And Weep....

...Memory remains. Your crimes are written and you will be found wanting in the balance. A million are dead and you are culpable under international law.

[TacticalPeek]

3. K&R

Laws enforced against a criminal president - nice idea.

:kick:

[aquart]

4. What a marvelous international precedent.

Now if only the United States and Britain heed it.

I would not be upset to Blair on trial for the murder of Kelly. As for Bush, where would we even begin?