Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s controversial former president, buried after 3 days of national mourning

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Controversial former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was buried Saturday after three days of national mourning in which thousands of supporters lined up outside a museum in Lima to visit the politician’s casket.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte saluted the former president before his burial at a pompous ceremony held in the presidential palace, where his casket was saluted by soldiers dressed in 19th-century uniforms.

But Boluarte did not speak about Fujimori, a divisive figure who ruled Peru for a decade, and whose eldest daughter is now one of the country’s most influential politicians.

Fujimori died of cancer on Wednesday at age 86. He was Peru’s president from 1990 to 2000 and had been in prison for most of the past 15 years after being convicted of crimes against humanity.

Fujimori was a university professor when he burst onto Peru’s political scene in the early 90s. His administration helped to put the nation’s economy on track following years of hyperinflation, and defeated the Shining Path, a fanatic communist group that led a violent campaign to overthrow the government.

But Fujimori’s government took an authoritarian turn in 1992, when he ordered the military to shut down Peru’s congress and its supreme court and declared a state of emergency. The measure undermined Peru’s democracy, and led to a period rife with human rights abuses. Political scientists say the surprise move against the congress, known in Latin America as the “Fujimorazo,” later inspired similar efforts by other presidents in the region to undermine local legislative branches and seize more power for the executive branch.

In 2009 Fujimori was convicted for the murders of 25 people in two massacres committed by a Peruvian military squadron in the outskirts of Lima, as well as the kidnapping of a journalist following the 1992 coup against the nation’s congress. Fujimori received a 25-year prison sentence and became the first elected leader in Latin American convicted of crimes against humanity.

Fujimori spent the last years of his life fighting the 2009 ruling and other corruption cases and received a presidential pardon in 2017 from then-Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. The pardon was revoked following a ruling by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights, but was reinstalled at the end of last year, when Fujimori was released from prison.

On Saturday, Fujimori’s children and hundreds of his supporters attended a religious ceremony for the former president that was held at a large theater in Lima.

“Finally daddy, you are free from the hate and vengeance of those people who did not forgive you for rescuing us from hunger and terror,” Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko Fujimori said. “You are free from those years of injust imprisonment.”

Fujimori is survived by two daughters and two sons. Keiko, his eldest daughter, is a two-time presidential candidat e. She now leads the conservative party Fuerza Popular, which has blocked several attempts by left-wing parties to impeach Boluarte for the deaths of dozens of anti-government protesters in December of 2022, and January of last year.

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Associated Press writer Manuel Rueda contributed from Bogota, Colombia.

Franklin Briceno, The Associated Press