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LIMA - Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori invoked his right to remain silent today at his murder trial, frustrating prosecutors hoping to show he relied on his right-hand man to oversee massacres of suspected leftist insurgents.
Fujimori, 69, declined to answer questions about how much power his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, had during his 10-year rule that ended in 2000, at the twilight of a bloody civil war in which 70,000 people died or disappeared.
"Sit up straight in your chair and show respect for the court!" the prosecutor, Avelino Guillen, told Fujimori, clearly irritated by his silence and frequent claims of having a foggy memory.
Prosecutors say Fujimori was at the top of a chain of command that passed through Montesinos to a death squad that killed 25 people in two massacres and kidnapped two others in the 1990s, when Peru was battling the Maoist guerrilla group known as the Shining Path.
Fujimori, who has proclaimed his innocence, tried to paint Montesinos as a rogue employee. Montesinos is in prison for corruption and arms trafficking, and Fujimori faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of ordering the massacres known as La Cantuta and Barrios Altos.
Security forces seized 10 suspected leftists from La Cantuta University, killed them and dumped their bodies in a shallow grave in 1992, a year after gunning down 15 people at a barbecue in the Barrios Altos neighbourhood, among them an 8-year-old boy.
"If Montesinos acted in the name of the president, I state and repeat that I didn't authorize him to do so," Fujimori said.
While in power, Fujimori defeated the guerrillas and tamed a chaotic economy, but critics said he went too far and violated human rights.
His supporters say he saved the Andean country from the threat of communist insurgents who had taken control of vast swaths of Peru.
His daughter Keiko, a member of Congress who is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2011, has tried to push the trial into the court of public opinion by saying her father is being mistreated.
"We are seeing a very aggressive attitude on the part of the prosecutor, an attitude I would call arrogant," she said outside the courtroom where three Supreme Court judges are hearing the case.
Fujimori was extradited from Chile to Peru in September after seven years in exile to face four trials. Friday was the third day of his human rights crimes trial.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court sentenced him to six years in prison for sending an aide to steal incriminating documents from Montesinos' house after the two had a falling out.
- REUTERS
