Peru ex-general alleges Fujimori authorized death squad killings News
Peru ex-general alleges Fujimori authorized death squad killings

[JURIST] Former Peruvian general Rodolfo Robles testified Monday that he believed that former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] was responsible for two massacres that took place during his presidency in the early 1990s, but admitted that he did not have any evidence linking Fujimori to the deaths. He said that he had "absolute conviction" that Fujimori authorized the killings, which he said were carried out by a death squad under the control of Fujimori's intelligence head Vladimiro Montesinos [JURIST report]. AP has more.

Fujimori is currently being tried on murder and kidnapping charges [JURIST report] stemming from military killings of 25 people in 1991 and 1992. The victims included a professor and nine students killed at the so-called La Cantuta massacre [MIT backgrounder] at Lima's La Cantuta University, along with 15 people killed in Lima's Barrios Altos area. Fujimori has claimed that he did not authorize and did not have any knowledge of the killings, which took place in the context of a war on Shining Path rebels [FAS backgrounder] in the country.