Fujimori Court Ruling: Judge deciding if Peruvian ex-president should go back to jail

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A court in Peru is considering whether the pardoned former president Alberto Fujimori could be sent back to jail over an outstanding accusation of human rights violations. From Lima, CGTN's Dan Collyns reports.

With the ring of a bell, judge Miluska Cano ended the hearing which could decide whether ex-president Alberto Fujimori will remain a free man. He had been serving a 25-year jail term for human rights crimes and corruption. Until President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned the controversial former leader on Christmas Eve barring any further prosecutions against him.

But lawyers argued he should still face trial - along with 22 others accused - for a recently opened human rights case.

GLORIA CANO LAWYER FOR THE VICTIMS' FAMILIES "We believe the rights of the victims limit the president's power to grant him a pardon. There are international measures which protect the victims' right to justice in such cases."

But the lawyer representing Fujimori - who was also pardoned on health grounds - said he could not go back to prison.

MIGUEL PEREZ LAWYER FOR ALBERTO FUJIMORI "He would die in prison. He is 80 years old and has severe health problems which, at the moment, have not been questioned by any medical authority."

Fujimori was convicted in 2009 for two massacres carried out by a military death squad under his command, but there were more including a case in which six men were abducted, tortured and killed in rural Pativilca in 1992.

JOSE LUIS AGUERO BROTHER OF VICTIM "I don't want to remember that night. They didn't say anything, they just ordered everyone out of the house, they beat everyone. It was a gruesome scene."

The memory weighs heavily on Jose Luis Aguero as he told CGTN how armed men took his older brother Pedro along with five other young men.

JOSE LUIS AGUERO BROTHER OF VICTIM "I heard screams coming from the hill in front of my house, it was as if the hill was screaming when it's normally silent in the early hours of the morning. They were torturing them, because they screamed terribly, the men screamed as they were tortured with blowtorches, they were being burned. It was unbearable."

He found their bodies strewn in this field the following day. This cross with their names marks the spot. But more than a quarter of a century later, Aguero is still fighting for justice:

DAN COLLYNS LIMA "Standing vigil outside the courtroom, activists and victims' relatives demand that the pardoned former leader Alberto Fujimori be put back on trial for death squad massacre for which they hold him responsible. The judges have reserved judgement. Dan Collyns, CGTN, Lima