Daughter joins Fujimori in Japan as pressure grows
Daughter joins Fujimori in Japan as pressure grows
TOKYO (AFP): Japan resisted growing pressure from Peru to extradite former president Alberto Fujimori on Friday while his eldest daughter flew in from Lima to join him.
A judge in Lima on Thursday issued an international arrest warrant for Fujimori, currently in self-imposed exile in Japan, for failing to appear in a Peruvian court to respond to criminal charges of abandoning his post.
But a Japanese foreign ministry official reaffirmed Tokyo's position that it recognized Fujimori as a Japanese citizen and that it did not extradite its nationals nor did it have an extradition pact with Peru.
"The Japanese government's position is that it doesn't comply with any request for extradition," she said. "As for the reported international arrest warrant, the matter should be primarily dealt with by the National Police Agency (NPA)."
The ex-president's 26-year-old daughter Keiko Sophia Fujimori landed here at 4:21 pm (0721 GMT) on a Japan Airline flight from Los Angeles where she made a stopover after leaving Lima last Tuesday.
She arrived alone and was mobbed by about 100 reporters and 300 onlookers.
In a brief statement, she said: "I'm happy to be here and I came to visit my father after eight months. I'm going to stay a few weeks. I had a long flight, but all I want to do right now is go to see my father."
When asked if she would seek asylum here, she replied: "That's not true."
She did not comment when asked about the warrant issued for her father, and said instead, "Please, right now I want to see my father."
The ex-president's daughter was escorted away without further comment through the gate to a limousine by about 10 airport security officers. Her immediate destination for the expected reunion with her father was not known.
The senior Fujimori, 62, has been living in Japan, the land of his ancestors, since November, when he resigned the presidency via fax from Tokyo.
Peru's Congress rejected his resignation and sacked him for "dereliction of duty."
Fujimori was declared an "absent defendant" in the arrest warrant signed by judge Jose Luis Lecaros which called for his arrest and return to Peru to answer the charge of abandoning his post.
An International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) spokesman in Lima said Japan was one of the group's 178 members but it could only detain Fujimori provisionally in Japan without an extradition order.
It was up to Japan's foreign ministry to determine for how long that would be, he said.
But an NPA spokesman here said, "Generally speaking, we are not allowed by domestic law to take a suspect into custody only on the basis of a warrant from the ICPO."
On Wednesday, Fernando Olivera, the Peruvian justice minister in the new administration of Alejandro Toledo, vowed Lima would launch an international campaign if need be for the extradition and trial of Fujimori.
He urged Tokyo to cease to be "the empire of impunity" with regard to its perceived harboring of Fujimori and his brother-in- law and the former Peruvian ambassador to Japan, Victor Aritomi Shinto.
The international arrest warrant is solely based on the charge of abandoning office, for which Fujimori could face up to two years in prison under Peruvian law.
However, as Japan does not recognize such charges as a criminal offense, extradition efforts will be much more complicated.
Keiko Fujimori became Peru's first lady in 1994 after Fujimori's troubles with his wife, Susana Higuchi, got increasingly political.
He divorced Higuchi -- now member of congress -- two years later after she accused him of tolerating corruption. Keiko is the only one of Fujimori's four children who has remained in Peru.
His 88-year-old mother, Mutsue, who immigrated to Peru with her husband from southwestern Japan before Alberto Fujimori was born, has returned to Japan for medical treatment, Japan's Kyodo news agency said earlier.