Video

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori starts hearing for human rights abuses amidst demonstrations by supporters and critics. The human rights trial for Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori got underway on Monday (December 10) in Lima amidst protests from supporters and critics of the controversial ex-leader. The 69-year-old Fujimori is accused of ordering his security team to carry out two massacres that claimed 25 lives and two kidnappings in the early 1990s, when Peru was battling armed leftist insurgents. He has denied the charges but faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted. Peru's Supreme Court is hearing the case at a police barracks where Fujimori is being held. Fujimori's daughters Keiko and Sachi Fujimori waved to their father through thick security glass from an adjacent room reserved for relatives and the media. Dressed in a dark pin-striped suit, Fujimori appeared at turns stoic and angry as he sat alone at a small table before a panel of three Supreme Court judges and scribbled in his notebook while lawyers delivered opening arguments. The televised trial is seen by rights activists as a turning point in a country long hobbled by a weak judicial system, impunity for the powerful, and painful memories of a civil war that killed tens of thousands of people. Rights activist Hugo Jugo told Reuters on Monday the trial is an important message to the world. "Finally, we've been able to get him on the bench of the accused and I think it's a very important message for the world. The president, in his principles, should be the first person to worry when human rights are violated. And in the case of Alberto Fujimori, he was involved in these violations," he said. Carlos Rivera, a lawyer for Peruvian justice officials who were able to extradite Fujimori from Chile, said the initial part of the trial will deal with ex-president's role in planning the kidnappings of two Peruvian citizens, including journalist Gustavo Gorriti. "(This is) about the presence of the accused Fujimori in meetings with higher-ups of the Armed Forces in the days leading up to the coup d'etat on April 5, 2007 and the planning during said meetings to coordinate the kidnappings of citizens," Rivera said. Defence attorney Cesar Nakasaki countered by saying the accusers had no concrete proof of Fujimori's role in the kidnappings. "My colleague has not clearly indicated a link between his argument and a fact that would be material for accusation. Because, as I understand it, the act of kidnapping has not been attributed to my client, but just the act of supposedly giving the order," Nakasaki said. Outside the courthouse, Fujmori supporters demonstrated against the trial, yelling "terrorists" at relatives of victims of the two massacres as they entered the courthouse. Some even tried to break a line of police officers to get at the relatives as they filed in. His supporters say it is unfair to persecute a man who ended a vicious guerrilla war led by the Maoist group known as the Shining Path and tamed a chaotic economy during his 1990-2000 rule. "With Alan Garcia the terrorists have already started. The terrorists are already on top," said an unidentified Fujimori-supporter. But critics of the ex-president demonstrated over the weekend and showed up the courthouse, some yelling 'life sentence for Fujimori!'. Families of victims who disappeared in the two massacres have pushed for the trial for years and are calling for a tough sentence. Carmen Amaro Condor, whose sister was killed, said its been a long road to the trial. "As relatives of the victims we've been searching for justice for 15 years. We really hope they can punish Fujimori for the crimes he committed during his term," she said. Fujimori was extradited to Peru from Chile in September after seven years in exile, five of them in Japan, the country of his parents' birth. Around 70,000 Peruvians died or disappeared in fighting and massacres between the military, the Shining Path, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and peasants in poor mountain towns during 20 years of conflict that broke out in 1980. Most were killed before Fujimori took office in 1990, and the violence faded after the capture of the Shining Path's supreme leader Abimael Guzman in 1992.