Alberto Fujimori, a former president of Peru who was convicted of human rights abuses, dies at 86

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Alberto Fujimori, whose decade-long presidency began with triumphs righting Peru’s economy and defeating a brutal insurgency only to end in autocratic excess that later sent him to prison, has died. He was 86.

His death Wednesday in the capital, Lima, was announced by his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, in a post on X.

Fujimori, who governed with an increasingly authoritarian hand in 1990-2000, was pardoned in December from his convictions for corruption and responsibility for the murder of 25 people. His daughter said in July that he was planning to run for Peru’s presidency for the fourth time in 2026.

The former university president and mathematics professor was the consummate political outsider when he emerged from obscurity to win Peru’s 1990 election over writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Over a tumultuous political career, he repeatedly made risky, go-for-broke decisions that alternately earned him adoration and reproach.

He took over a country ravaged by runaway inflation and guerrilla violence, mending the economy with bold actions including mass privatizations of state industries. Defeating fanatical Shining Path rebels took a little longer but also won him broad-based support.

His presidency, however, collapsed just as dramatically.

After briefly shutting down Congress and elbowing himself into a controversial third term, he fled the country in disgrace in 2000 when leaked videotapes showed his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, bribing lawmakers. The president went to Japan, the land of his parents, and famously faxed in his resignation.

He stunned supporters and foes alike five years later when he landed in neighboring Chile, where he was arrested and then extradited to Peru. He had hoped to run for Peru’s presidency in 2006, but instead wound up in court facing charges of abuse of power.

The high-stakes political gambler would lose miserably. He became the first former president in the world to be tried and convicted in his own country for human rights violations. He was not found to have personally ordered the 25 death-squad killings for which he was convicted, but he was deemed responsible because the crimes were committed in his government’s name.

His 25-year sentence did not stop Fujimori from seeking political revindication, which he planned from a prison built in a police academy on the outskirts of Lima, the capital.

His congresswoman daughter Keiko tried in 2011 to restore the family dynasty by running for the presidency but was narrowly defeated in a runoff. She ran again in 2016 and 2021, when she lost by just 44,000 votes after a campaign in which she promised to free her father.

“After a long battle with cancer, our father, Alberto Fujimori, has just departed to meet the Lord," she said on X Wednesday. "We ask those who loved him to accompany us with a prayer for the eternal rest of his soul.”

Fujimori’s presidency was, in fact, a brash display of outright authoritarianism, known locally as “caudillismo,” in a region shakily stepping away from dictatorships toward democracy.

He is survived by his four children. The oldest, Keiko, became first lady in 1996 when his father divorced his mother, Susana Higuchi, in a bitter battle in which she accused Fujimori of having her tortured. The youngest child, Kenji, was elected a congressman.

Fujimori was born July 28, 1938, Peruvian Independence Day, and his immigrant parents picked cotton until they could open a tailor’s shop in downtown Lima.

He earned a degree in agricultural engineering in 1956, and then studied in France and the United States, where he received a graduate degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1972.

In 1984 he became rector of the Agricultural University in Lima, and six years later, he ran for president without ever having held political office, billing himself as a clean alternative to Peru’s corrupt, discredited political class.

He soared from 6% in the polls a month before the 1990 election to finish second out of nine in the balloting. He went on to beat Vargas Llosa in a runoff.

The victory, he later said, came from the same frustration that fueled the Shining Path.

“My government is the product of rejection, of being fed up with Peru because of the frivolity, corruption and nonfunctioning of the traditional political class and the bureaucracy,” he said.

Once in office, Fujimori’s tough talk and hands-on style at first won him only plaudits, as car bombings still ripped through the capital and annual inflation approached 8,000 percent.

He applied the same economic shock therapy that Vargas Llosa had advocated but he had argued against in the campaign.

Privatizing state-owned industries, Fujimori slashed public spending and attracted record foreign investment.

Known affectionately as “El chino,” due to his Asian ancestry, Fujimori often donned peasant garb to visit jungle Indigenous communities and highland farmers, while delivering electricity and drinking water to dirt-poor villages. That distinguished him from the patrician, white politicians who typically lacked his commoner’s touch.

Fujimori also gave Peru’s security forces free rein to take on the Shining Path.

In September 1992, police captured rebel leader Abimael Guzmán. Deservedly or not, Fujimori took credit.

Taking power just years after much of the region had shed dictatorships, the former university professor ultimately represented a step back. He developed a growing taste for power and resorted to increasingly anti-democratic means to amass more of it.

In April 1992, he shut down Congress and the courts, accusing them of shackling his efforts to defeat the Shining Path and spur economic reforms.

International pressure forced him to call elections for an assembly to replace the Congress. The new legislative body, dominated by his supporters, changed Peru’s constitution to allow the president to serve two consecutive five-year terms. Fujimori was swept back into office in 1995, after a brief border war with Ecuador, in an election landslide.

Human rights advocates at home and abroad blasted him for pushing through a general amnesty law forgiving human rights abuses committed by security forces during Peru’s “anti-subversive” campaign between 1980 and 1995.

The conflict would claim nearly 70,000 lives, a truth commission found, with the military responsible for more than a third of the deaths. Journalists and businessmen were kidnapped, students disappeared and at least 2,000 highland peasant women were forcibly sterilized.

In 1996, Fujimori’s majority bloc in Congress put him on the path for a third term when it approved a law that determined his first five years as president didn’t count because the new constitution was not yet in place when he was elected.

A year later, Fujimori’s Congress fired three Constitutional Tribunal judges who tried to overturn the legislation, and his foes accused him of imposing a democratically elected dictatorship.

By then, almost daily revelations were showing the monumental scale of corruption around Fujimori. About 1,500 people connected to his government were prosecuted on corruption and other charges, including eight former Cabinet ministers, three former military commanders, an attorney general and a former chief of the Supreme Court.

The accusations against Fujimori led to years of legal wrangling. In December, Peru’s Constitutional Court ruled in favor of a humanitarian pardon granted to Fujimori on Christmas Eve in 2017 by then-President Pablo Kuczynski. Wearing a face mask and getting supplemental oxygen, Fujimori walked out of the prison door and got in a sport utility vehicle driven by his daughter-in-law.

The last time he was seen in public was on Sept. 4, leaving a private hospital in a wheelchair. He told the press that he had undergone a CT scan and when asked if his presidential candidacy was still going ahead, he smiled and said “We’ll see, we’ll see.”

Frank Bajak, the principal writer of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2024. Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City contributed.

Supporters of former President Alberto Fujimori gather outside the home of his daughter Keiko, the day after he died in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Supporters of former President Alberto Fujimori gather outside the home of his daughter Keiko, the day after he died in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Pallbearers carry the coffin of former President Alberto Fujimori from the home of his daughter Keiko, the day after he died in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Keiko Fujimori, right, and her brother Kenji stand by as pallbearers carry the coffin of their father, former President Alberto Fujimori, out of Keiko's home the day after he died in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

FILE - Peruvian presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori poses for a photo, April 8, 1990. His daughter Keiko Fujimori announced in a post on X that he died of cancer on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Fred Savariau, File)

FILE - Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori gives a press conference in front of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, April 22, 1997. His daughter Keiko Fujimori announced in a post on X that he died of cancer on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE - Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori, center, is driven out of prison by one of his lawyers, accompanied by his son Kenji, left, after his release, in Callao, Peru, Dec. 6, 2023. His daughter Keiko Fujimori announced in a post on X that he died of cancer on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

FILE - Chilean police officers surround former Peru's President Alberto Fujimori, left, as he leaves his house in Santiago to be extradited to Peru to face human rights and corruption charges, early Sept. 22, 2007. His daughter Keiko Fujimori announced in a post on X that he died of cancer on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Claudio Santana, File)

FILE - New Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori waves to supporters at the government palace, July 28, 1990. His daughter Keiko Fujimori announced in a post on X that he died of cancer on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Alejandro Balaguer, File)

FILE - Presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori waves to supporters after casting his vote during a presidential runoff against novelist Mario Vargas Llosa in Lima, Peru, June 10, 1990. His daughter Keiko Fujimori announced in a post on X that he died of cancer on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Recart, File)

FILE - Peru's jailed, former President Alberto Fujimori, photographed through a glass window, attends his trial at a police base on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, June 28, 2016. His daughter Keiko Fujimori announced in a post on X that he died of cancer on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

FILE - Former Peru's President Alberto Fujimori waves at his home in Santiago after leaving the academy for the training of corrections officers in Santiago, Chile, May 18, 2006. (AP Photo/Claudio Santana, File)

FILE - Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori is seen gesturing on a screen during the first day of his trial on charges of alleged human rights violations and corruption during his government at a police base in Lima, Dec. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs is due in court Tuesday on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges. An indictment says the music mogul “engaged in a persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals.”

Combs was arrested late Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities conducting a sex trafficking investigation raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami.

Over the past year, Combs has been sued by people who say he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse. He has denied many of those allegations, and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said outside the courthouse Tuesday morning that Combs, 54, would plead not guilty and that he would “fight like hell” to get his client released from custody.

Here is the Latest:

Prosecutors say the violence Combs exacted on his victims was so extreme that he should be denied bail.

In a detention letter written for the federal judge overseeing the music mogul's case, prosecutors described how Combs would assault women, employees and others “by throwing objects at them, choking them, pushing them, kicking them, and slamming them against walls and on to the ground.”

The letter says the violence was sometimes spontaneous and sometimes premeditated, including “resorting to kidnapping and arson when the defendant’s power and control were threatened.”

Prosecutors say Combs’ “disposition to violence cannot be reasonably prevented through bail conditions.”

The letter also says Combs should be denied bail because he has already reached out to potential witnesses in the case and that further attempts at witness tampering are likely.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams says Combs did not act alone.

During a news conference Tuesday, Williams said Combs’ security and household staff, as well as operators high up in the music industry were complicit. Williams says they cleaned up damaged hotel rooms and "delivered large quantities of cash to Combs to pay for the commercial sex workers.”

Williams says the investigation is ongoing, and is urging "anyone with information about this case to come forward and to do it quickly.”

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, whose office is bringing the case against Sean “Diddy” Combs, says the music mogul led a criminal organization that carried out kidnapping, forced labor and sex trafficking, among other crimes.

Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, Williams said authorities will seek to have Combs detained while he awaits trial.

He spoke before a display board showing images of some of the items recovered in searches of Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami in March, including AR-15s and a drum magazine containing dozens of rounds of ammunition. He says agents also seized electronic devices that contain images and videos of sexual encounters.

Williams says: “Combs led and participated in a racketeering conspiracy that used the business empire he controlled to carry out criminal activity, including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and the obstruction of justice.”

Combs' lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, has said he will fight to keep his client free. He says Combs is innocent and will plead not guilty.

Comb’s former longtime girlfriend, whom he was seen attacking in a March 2016 security video, has declined to comment on the federal case against him.

Douglas Wigdor, an attorney for the singer Cassie Ventura, said in a statement released before Combs was due to appear in court Tuesday that neither he nor his client have anything to say on the matter.

Wigdor says: “We appreciate your understanding and if that changes, we will certainly let you know.”

Ventura reached a settlement with Combs last November, one day after filing a lawsuit containing allegations of beatings and abuse by the music producer.

Outside the Manhattan courthouse early Tuesday, Combs’ lawyer, noted that his client came to New York City voluntarily because they knew the charges were coming.

Marc Agnifilo said: “Not a lot of defendants do that. He came to New York to, to basically engage the court system and start the case.”

Though the indictment was not unsealed at the time of his comments, Agnifilo said they know what the charges will be and that Combs is “innocent of these charges.” He vowed to “fight like hell” to get Combs released from federal custody.

The indictment alleges Combs hit, kicked and threw objects at victims, and sometimes dragged them by their hair, causing injuries that often took days or weeks to heal. It says Combs also threw people around, choked and shoved them.

Prosecutors say his employees and associates witnessed his violence and, rather than intervening, helped him cover it up, including by preventing victims from leaving, and locating and contacting victims who attempted to flee.

The indictment describes Combs as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in activities including sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.

He’s accused of striking, punching and dragging women on numerous occasions, throwing objects and kicking them, and enlisting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all.

Lawrence Stark, of the Bronx borough of New York, makes comments in support of Sean "Diddy" Combs, outside Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)