Peru restricts crimes against humanity cases
LIMA—Peru on Friday adopted a law that prevents the prosecution of crimes against humanity committed before 2002, which could benefit disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori.
Hundreds of others accused of abuses during the South American country’s internal conflict in the 1980s and 1990s also stand to be let off.
The law, which was published in the official journal, was approved despite a resolution adopted in mid-June by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights demanding the process be suspended.
The United Nations on Friday also denounced the passing of the bill.
The law’s adoption—which was approved by parliament last month—should bring an end to hundreds of investigations into presumed crimes committed during Peru’s conflict with left-wing rebels between 1980 and 2000, in which 69,000 people died and another 21,000 disappeared.
Fujimori, president from 1990 to 2000, was convicted in 2009 over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people, including a child, were killed in what the government said were anti-terrorist operations.
Freed by the court
The 86-year-old, who is in failing health, spent 16 years in prison before Peru’s Constitutional Court ordered him freed for humanitarian reasons last December, despite objections from the Inter-American rights court.
He had also been facing trial over the killing by soldiers of six farmers in a separate case from 1992, but that may now be shelved.
According to the new law, “no one can be prosecuted, convicted or punished for crimes against humanity or war crimes, for acts committed before July 1, 2002,” which is the date that the Rome Statute entered into force.
The Rome Statute was the treaty that established the International Criminal Court and established the principle that the worst crimes, including genocide, have no statute of limitations.
“No act before that date can be qualified as a crime against humanity or war crime,” said the law, which enters into force on Saturday.
Peru’s new law “contravenes the country’s obligations under international law and is a troubling development,” and comes “amid a broader backlash against human rights and the rule of law,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
