Fujimori extradited to Chile to face trial

SANTIAGO, Chile - Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was flown to his home country in police custody yesterday, one day after the Chilean Supreme Court authorized his extradition on human-rights and corruption charges.

The Supreme Court ruled that Fujimori should be extradited on two rights and five corruption charges. The rights-abuse charges include sanctioning the death-squad killings of 25 people.

Chilean police officers formally transferred control over Fujimori to their Peruvian counterparts inside a vehicle at the airport tarmac in Santiago. Fujimori was examined by a Peruvian doctor before boarding the aircraft, officials said.

Fujimori, who calls the charges politically motivated, said in comments to local media on the eve of his departure that while his government made mistakes, his conscience was clear.

"This does not mean that I've been tried, much less convicted. . . . I hope that in Peru there exists the due process to clarify the accusations against me," he told the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio.

Fujimori was highly popular in the early years of his administration, crushing a violent guerrilla movement, overseeing a flourishing economy, and building schools and health clinics in rural areas that benefited the poor. But an increasing drift toward authoritarianism and evidence of corruption turned many Peruvians against him.

After his 10-year government collapsed amid a corruption scandal in 2000, Fujimori spent five years in exile in Japan, the homeland of his parents, where he was protected from extradition by his double nationality.

He stunned followers and foes alike when he landed in a small plane in Chile in November 2005 and revealed his ambition to run for president in the 2006 elections, even though Peru's Congress had banned him from running for public office until 2011.