Fujimori evades Peruvian justice by turning Japanese

By Richard Lloyd Parry

TOYKO - Alberto Fujimori, the former president of Peru, who was sacked after being condemned by his own parliament as "morally unfit" to hold office, yesterday spent his first day in his new identity – as Kenya Fujimori, a fully accredited Japanese citizen.

In an extraordinary development which eliminates a diplomatic embarrassment for the Japanese government, Tokyo has decreed that the former president cannot be extradited for suspected complicity in money laundering and drug trafficking allegedly perpetrated by his former intelligence chief.

"There is no legal problem for him to stay in Japan," the Japanese foreign minister, Yohei Kono, said yesterday. "If there is a request from the Peruvian government to hand him over, we will deal with the matter based on Japan's domestic laws." But, as Mr Kono knows very well, Japan does not surrender its own citizens for extradition.

Mr Fujimori's unexpected Japanese citizenship arises from a far-sighted decision made by his emigrant parents to register him at the Japanese Embassy in Lima after his birth in 1938. Young Alberto's name was also added to the Fujimori's family register in the southern Japanese village that was the family's ancestral home. Until 1985, children born abroad to Japanese parents were entitled to dual nationality if their births were registered. Although Peruvian law requires its presidents to have been born in Peru – which Mr Fujimori has always insisted he was – it does not have anything to say about dual nationality. Mr Fujimori never explicitly renounced his rights to Japanese citizenship.

The transformation of Senor Fujimori to Fujimori-san solves a diplomatic problem for Japan, which has been troubling its authorities ever since his arrival in Japan three-and-a-half weeks ago. Allegations of human rights abuses have never troubled the Japanese government much, and in Tokyo he is regarded with pride and indulgence as one of the country's most successful exports.

In 1997 he won even more admiration for his uncompromising handling of the seizure of hostages in the Japanese Embassy in Lima by Tupac Amaru, the left-wing guerrillas. Mr Fujimori's son, Hiro, lives in Tokyo as does his sister and her husband, the recently sacked ambassador, Victor Aritomi. His status in Japan was reflected in the generous development loans that the Peruvian government received annually.

But if a legitimate government, like the one that has taken over in Peru, was to demand that a Peruvian Mr Fujimori be handed over then it would have been almost impossible for Tokyo to refuse. Now it has an unimpeachable excuse – that he was one of theirs all along.