The Peruvian government ruled out any risk Tuesday for ex-president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption at the age of 81, of contracting the coronavirus in detention, the latter being alone in his cell. "He is locked up alone, so there is no factor of prison overcrowding. It is therefore not a risk factor for contracting the coronavirus, " said Justice Minister Fernando Castañeda to ATV.
His daughter, Keiko Fujimori, the leader of the Peruvian opposition, in preventive detention for a corruption scandal, had asked Monday that his father could be released from prison because of the risks linked to the epidemic of Covid-19. Keiko, 44, made her request from the Chorrillos women's prison in Lima, where she is serving a 15-month preventive prison sentence as part of the Odebrecht corruption scandal, named after a Brazilian building giant who admitted to having paid bribes to many Latin American political leaders.
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For his part, the head of the National Prison Institute (INPE), Gerson Villar, assured that the risk for the former strong man of Peru to be contaminated was "not so high".
Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity and corruption. Suffering from respiratory and neurological problems, as well as hypertension, he has increased in recent years back and forth between the hospital and his place of detention. The former head of state was briefly released between the end of 2017 and the end of 2018 after having benefited from a controversial pardon from the then president Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018). The measure was finally overturned by the courts and Alberto Fujimori returned to prison.
Peru, which has a population of 32 million, has so far registered 10,303 reported cases of Covid-19, including 230 deaths.