Sterilisation case against Fujimori goes to court

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is on trial for his role in a 1990s government program in which many Indigeus women in poor communities say y were forcibly sterilized, and some died or suffered serious injuries because of infection.

judicial process led by Judge Rafael Martínez began Monday following years of demands by human rights activists as well as numerous obstacles, including prosecutors who shelved investigations of Fujimori in past.

new prosecutor in case, Pablo Espiza, said sterilizations were carried out in unsanitary conditions and that some women died from infections.

Fujimori has been implicated in deaths of five women and injuries of ar 1,301 women who were allegedly sterilized against ir will.

Fujimori, 82, is serving a 25-year prison sentence for two killings by military during his 1990-2000 administration. He has also been convicted of corruption and faces ar trial for murder of six farmers by a military death squad during his administration.

Fujimori said through his lawyers that he should t be tried in sterilization case because, when he was extradited from Chile in 2007, it was t included in group of crimes for which he was going to be judged.

Some or former members of Fujimori's government are also accused in sterilization case.

As president, Fujimori anunced at a congress in China in 1995 that his government would undertake a program to help poor Peruvian women decide number of children y wanted to have. Later, re were growing complaints from women in poor communities in Andes who said y had been sterilized without ir kwledge.

Officials of Fujimori's government claimed any excesses were fault of overzealous local medical authorities. But program was so controversial that U.S. Congress cut aid payments to Peru that had been used to fund program.

"re are thousands of victims for which you can demonstrate that all this was part of state politics which was implemented from head of government, alongside his advisor, Vladimiro Montesis, and went through Minister of Health and Deputy Ministers and ir Directors General," explained lawyer and human rights activist Ana Maria Vidal.

Fujimori had boasted that sterilization program dropped Peru's birth rate from 3.7 children per woman in 1990 to 2.7 children a decade later.