Peru: Chile arrested Peru's disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori yesterday, and Lima said it would request his extradition to try him on human rights and corruption charges.
Mr Fujimori was arrested at the Marriott Hotel in Santiago after arriving on Sunday afternoon on a surprise visit from Japan, where he has lived as a fugitive since 2000, saying he would return to Peru to run for president.
Chile's foreign relations minister, Ignacio Walker, said it was not possible to expel Mr Fujimori from Chile without going through a full extradition process. "This is in the hands of the justice system. Peru will have to see when it activates the extradition petition. They haven't asked for it yet," Mr Walker told reporters.
A Peruvian government source said Peruvian interior minister Romulo Pizarro and anti-corruption prosecutor Antonio Maldonado were travelling to Chile yesterday to work on the extradition.
Mr Fujimori (67) was being held in a police building in Santiago after Chilean courts processed a detention request from Peruvian authorities late on Sunday.
He led Peru from 1990 to 2000 and fled to his ancestral homeland, Japan, when a corruption scandal toppled his government in 2000, dodging Peru's efforts to try him on charges of corruption and political responsibility for the death squad murders of one child and 24 adults in the early 1990s.
Sebastian Brett, of Human Rights Watch in Chile, said Chile should not delay in extraditing Mr Fujimori, once it verified the basic requirements for extradition, such as that the charges he faces are defined as crimes in both countries, and that he would not face the death penalty in Peru. - (Reuters)