The announcement came after Fujimori’s son Kenji split the opposition vote in parliament, allowing President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to avoid impeachment and sparking speculation about a pardon as political payback.
“The president of the republic… has decided to grant a humanitarian pardon to Mr Alberto Fujimori and seven other people in similar condition,” the presidency said in a statement that did not name the other recipients.
A medical team “determined that Mr Fujimori suffers from a progressive, degenerative and incurable illness and that prison conditions represent a grave risk to his life,” the statement said.
Kenji Fujimori hailed the decision.
“On behalf of the Fujimori family, I would like to thank President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for the noble and magnanimous gesture of giving my father Alberto the humanitarian pardon,” he wrote on his Twitter account. (AFP)
