MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peru: Alberto Fujimori hospitalized due to heart failure

“Alberto Fujimori is a person of care because of his age,” according to his doctor

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was rushed into a Lima hospital Thursday due to a heart problem consisting of “atrial fibrillation” and “arrhythmia,” according to his physician.

Fujimori is incarcerated after being found guilty of corruption and crimes against humanity.

“He decompensated at seven o'clock in the morning and began to have atrial fibrillation with a tremendous arrhythmia, and forced us to take him to the nearest health center” to the police base where he has been serving a 25-year sentence since 2007, Doctor Alejandro Aguinaga, said.

Fujimori, 83, was first “stabilized” at a hospital near his detention center and was transferred later in the day to the Centenario clinic in the Lima district of Pueblo Libre.

According to Aguinaga, the former president (1990-2000) has been suffering since 2018 from atrial fibrillation for which he underwent surgery last October. “He is a person of care because of his age,” he explained.

“His life was in danger if he did not receive assistance,” according to a relative of Fujimori's.

The National Penitentiary Institute (Inpe), which controls Peru's prisons, reported on Thursday morning that Fujimori “was evacuated on an emergency basis due to decompensation” and the “regular procedures” were enacted.

The former president is serving a 25-year prison sentence for the Barrios Altos (1991) and La Cantuta (1992) massacres, where an army death squad killed 25 people - a child among them - in an alleged anti-terrorist operation when he was president.

Since 2007, when he arrived in Peru extradited by Chile, he has suffered recurrent respiratory and neurological problems (facial paralysis) and hypertension.

In October 2021 he was hospitalized for heart problems and underwent a catheterization to place a stent, a mesh to open blocked veins and arteries. At that time he remained hospitalized for two months.

The former president's eldest daughter and opposition leader, Keiko Fujimori, denounced her father's health has deteriorated since October when current President Pedro Castillo ordered him transferred to another jailhouse in a move to put an end to the so-called “golden prisons.”

Keiko Fujimori said the government's intentions were “cruel and malicious.”

The government has insisted it planned to send Fujimori to a regular prison as soon as his health allows it. A request for Fujimori's release on the grounds that he might catch COVID-19 has also been turned down.