Fujimori cannot be prosecuted for forced sterilizations of indigenous people, Peruvian judge rules

A Peruvian judge ruled this Friday that the former president Alberto Fujimori he cannot for now be prosecuted for the thousands of women subjected to “forced sterilizations” between 1996 and 2000, as this cause was not included in the extradition request from Chile.

Judge Rafael Martínez stated that Fujimori (1990-2000) can only be prosecuted in the case of sterilizations if authorized by the Chilean Supreme Court, which in 2007 granted the ex-governor’s extradition for other cases of human rights violations and corruption.

“This situation of the investigated Fujimori, by virtue of the judgment of the Supreme Court of the neighboring country that grants his extradition, would prevent the formal processing of this process as these facts are not included among the crimes for which his extradition was authorized,” said the judge.

Martínez had to decide whether the 83-year-old former president, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence, could be brought to trial by the 1,317 plaintiffs in the sterilization case, which began in 2002, which has been shelved and reopened several times.

An estimated 270,000 poor Peruvians, many of them indigenous people who did not speak Spanish, underwent fallopian tube ligation surgeries 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, including one who was 19 years old and who reported that when she went to vaccinate her baby at the doctor’s office in 1997, her tubes were tied.

The questioned program sought to reduce the birth rate to boost economic development. In these surgeries 18 women died, according to official data.

The hearings in this case began in March, without the participation of Fujimori, since he is only obliged to appear for cases included in the extradition process.

Prosecutor Pablo Espinoza presented the charges to the court in March and throughout a dozen hearings since September, Judge Martínez had been presenting the grounds for his resolution.

The judge has not yet expressed his decision on the other six co-defendants in the case, including three former ministers of Health: Alejandro Aguinaga (current Fujimori legislator), Eduardo Yong Motta and Marino Costa Bauer.

Fujimori and his collaborators were denounced as “indirect perpetrators of damage to life and health, serious injuries, and serious human rights violations.”