Peru's polarising ex-president Alberto Fujimori dies at 86

Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori, who ruled his country with an iron fist and then spent 16 years in prison for crimes against humanity, died on Wednesday at age 86 in the capital Lima.

"After a long battle with cancer, our father, Alberto Fujimori, has just departed to meet the Lord," his children Keiko, Hiro, Sachie and Kenji Fujimori wrote on social media platform X.

"Thank you for so much, Dad!" they added.

Fujimori, who led Peru from 1990 to 2000, was released from prison on humanitarian grounds in December, two-thirds of the way through a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity during his rule.

He was a key part of Peru's so-called war on terrorism, with government forces fighting against Shining Path and Tupac Amaru leftist rebels. It left more than 69,000 people dead and 21,000 missing from 1980 to 2000, most of them civilians, according to a government truth commission.

Sources close to his family told AFP earlier Wednesday that Fujimori's health had deteriorated rapidly after completing treatment for tongue cancer in August.

He was last seen in public on Thursday as he was leaving a clinic in the Miraflores district of Lima, where he said he had undergone a CT scan.

As news of his death spread quickly on social media, supporters and detractors quarreled over his legacy.

Many Peruvians called Fujimori, who was of Japanese descent, "el chino," or the Chinese man.

After his death Wednesday supporters gathered outside his house chanting "El chino did not die! El chino is present!"

In July, his daughter Keiko announced that the rightwinger would run for president again in 2026.

Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen expressed his condolences to the Fujimori family. "We want his children and relatives to know we feel sorrow," he said.

Adrianzen said he would talk to the family about what kind of funeral they want. It was not clear whether Fujimori would receive a state funeral.

Fujimori was convicted and sent to prison in 2009 over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people, including a child, were killed in what he presented as anti-terrorist operations.

In December 2017, then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Fujimori due to his ill health.

But the Supreme Court later annulled the pardon and in January 2019, he was returned to jail from hospital.

- Hostage crisis -

He was released again in December 2023 after a court reinstated his pardon.

He was adored and reviled in equal measures in Peru.

As he turned 80 in 2018, Fujimori sent a message to AFP which read in part: "Let history judge what I got right and what I got wrong."

He also expressed the conviction that he had paved the way for Peru to become one of the leading countries of Latin America.

Supporters credited him with saving the nation from left-wing Shining Path and Tupac Amaru guerrillas and shoring up the economy.

Opponents saw him as a power-thirsty autocrat.

Sociologist Eduardo Toche expressed scathing criticism of Fujimori when he was convicted of crimes against humanity in 2009, saying the Fujimori government represented the lowest, worst point in the history of Peru as he made up his own rules and ignored the country's institutions.

"For him there was no legal framework. The legal framework was that of his will and that of his friends, nothing more," Toche told AFP at the time.

One of the most dramatic episodes of his presidency was a four-month hostage ordeal at the Japanese embassy in Lima in late 1996 and early 1997.

The standoff ended with Fujimori sending in commandos who rescued all 72 hostages and killed 14 rebels.

But the later Fujimori years were dominated by a bribery scandal involving his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos.

Fujimori went into self-imposed exile in Japan and memorably faxed in his resignation but was arrested years later in Chile and sent back to Peru for trial.

His daughter Keiko has made three failed bids for the presidency.