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Crimes against humanity

Alberto Fujimori was convicted of kidnapping, murders and corruption. On November 3rd 1991 residents of a building in one the poorest districts of Lima, Barrios Altos, organized a party. Half an hour before midnight a group of six armed men stormed the flat and, without any questions asked, killed fifteen people suspected of contacts with a terrorist group called the Shining Path. Among the victims was an 8-year-old boy, four other people were injured. The attackers were identified as members of the so-called Grupo Colina, a paramilitary unit of Peru’s armed forces. Later it was revealed that the attackers have confused the floors of the building and killed innocent people by mistake. On June 18th 1992, two days after a bomb explosion in Lima, the members of Grupo Colina stormed the National University of Education Enrique Guzmán y Valle (also known as La Cantuta) and based on denunciations chose eight students and a professor suspected of carrying out the terrorist attack. They were kidnapped, tortured and killed. The members of the military followed orders of Vladimiro Montesinos, the head of Peru’s intelligence service and Fujimori’s advisor. The Supreme Council of Military Justice sentenced ten people from this group to prison sentences ranging from one year to 20 years behind bars. In 1995, the convicted individuals were released due to an amnesty. When Alberto Fujimori stood trial in Peru, it was proven that he was aware of plans to carry out the action and ordered the military to kidnap his critics – journalist Gustavo Gorritiego and a businessman Samuel Dyer Ampudii. For that he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Other trials of the former president found Fujimori guilty of embezzlement of 15 million US dollars of state funds, bribing journalists, wiretapping phones and spending military and intelligence service funds on financing the press that backed his candidacy in the next presidential election.