LIMA, Peru - Waving his arms in outrage and shouting that he is innocent, Alberto Fujimori went on trial Monday on charges of using a death squad to kill leftist guerrillas and collaborators.
It is the first time in Peru's history that a former president faces a trial for crimes committed during his administration - and one of the few cases of a Latin American leader being tried after leaving office. The case is stirring mixed emotions in a country where many still admire Fujimori for defeating a bloody insurgency.
Fujimori faces charges that he authorized the 1992 death-squad slayings of nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University, and the 1991 killings of 15 people in a tenement in Lima's Barrios Altos neighborhood. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
He also is charged with ordering the kidnapping of a prominent journalist and a businessman, who were interrogated by army intelligence agents and released. Fujimori, 69, denies any involvement.
As the morning session drew to a close, Fujimori, who had shown no emotion until that point, asked permission to speak. Standing and waving his arms in outrage, he said he had received a nation on the edge of anarchy when he took office.
"My government rescued the human rights of 25 million Peruvians with no exceptions. If any detestable acts were committed, I condemn them, but they were not done on my orders. I reject the charges totally. I am innocent and do not accept the prosecutor's accusation," he shouted angrily.
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