Fujimori blues

Alberto Fujimori was convicted of abuse of power and sentenced to six years, but he has a variety of other, more serious charges, still pending related to human rights. The interesting part of this particular charge is that it involved a warrantless search to see if his former intelligence head, Vladimir Montesinos, had damaging evidence like videotapes, which over time he had collected like comic books to blackmail politicians, judges, etc.

The National Security Archive just recently posted some U.S. government documents obtained through FOIA, which are added to a number of documents already declassified. One is a graphic account of the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis as members of MRTA who surrendered had their heads blown off. The second document is an analysis, essentially saying that although the rescue operation was popular, the “strong-arm” tactics that characterized it were starting to alienate the population.