Ex-Peru President Guilty Of Murder

A special tribunal has sentenced former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to 25 years in prison for what it called "crimes against humanity" — death squad activities during his autocratic 10-year rule.

The 70-year-old former leader was convicted of 25 murders committed by a military hit squad in the early 1990s and the kidnappings of a businessman and a journalist.

The three-judge court said Tuesday there was no question Fujimori authorized the hit squad's creation and a cover-up of its 50 murders as he crushed the fanatical Shining Path insurgency.

"All the cases have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt," presiding Judge Cesar San Martin told a hushed courtroom.

Fujimori apparently anticipated a guilty verdict. He sat alone taking notes as the verdict was read after a 15-month televised trial.

Fujimori is the first democratically-elected former president to be tried for rights violations in his own country.

He said he would appeal.

His congresswoman daughter, Keiko, says the verdict will only strengthen her campaign for president. She is among front-runners in the 2011 race.

In its first bloody raid, the military death squad Fujimori was convicted of authorizing killed 15 people - including an 8-year-old - with silencer-equipped machine guns during a raid on a barbecue in July 1991 in the Barrios Altos district.

Seven months later, in July 1992, the so-called Colina group "disappeared" nine students and a leftist professor at La Cantuta university.

Fujimori was also convicted of two 1992 kidnappings: the 10-day abduction of businessman Samuel Dyer and the 24-hour abduction of Gustavo Gorriti, a leading journalist who had criticized the president's shuttering of the opposition-led Congress and courts.

Outside the Lima police base where the trial was being held, pro- and anti-Fujimori activists fought each other on the street with sticks, fists and rocks before the melee was broken up by riot police.

Some 30 relatives of victims clashed with about 500 Fujimori supporters. No injuries were immediately reported.