Alberto Fujimori, a former president of Peru who was convicted of human rights abuses, dies at 86

Alberto Fujimori, whose decade-long presidency began with triumphs righting Peru’s economy and defeating a brutal insurgency only to end in autocratic excess that later sent him to prison, has died. He was 86.

His death Wednesday in the capital, Lima, was announced by his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, in a post on X.

Fujimori, who governed with an increasingly authoritarian hand in 1990-2000, was pardoned in December from his convictions for corruption and responsibility for the murder of 25 people. His daughter said in July that he was planning to run for Peru’s presidency for the fourth time in 2026.

The former university president and mathematics professor was the consummate political outsider when he emerged from obscurity to win Peru’s 1990 election over writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Over a tumultuous political career, he repeatedly made risky, go-for-broke decisions that alternately earned him adoration and reproach.

Read more: AP