Fujimori convicted

Twenty-five years for Barrios Altos and La Cantuta. The first time a Latin American head of state is convicted of human-rights crimes by his own country.

On 7 April 2009, the Peruvian Supreme Court's Special Penal Chamber finds Alberto Fujimori guilty of homicide, aggravated kidnapping, and grave bodily harm in connection with Barrios Altos and La Cantuta. The sentence is 25 years. The conviction is, in narrow legal terms, a milestone — a national court convicting its own former president, with the Grupo Colina chain of command running through the Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional and the office of the presidency. In wider terms it is a single counter-example against a region-wide pattern of impunity, and it has taken eighteen years from the night of the barbecue. The bill, when it arrives, arrives that late.