Alejandro Toledo, the man who led the opposition against Alberto Fujimori’s regime in Peru, denounced the electoral fraud of the year 2000 and turned the March of the Four Suyos into the symbol of the collapse of Fujimorism, has turned to the daughter of his greatest political rival to regain his freedom. At 81 years old, imprisoned in the Barbadillo prison — the exclusive jail for former rulers — for two corruption sentences, the former president has asked Keiko Fujimori to expedite the processing of the presidential pardon he submitted for humanitarian reasons. He says he suffers from cancer, a serious heart condition, and hemorrhages. “I am seriously ill. I do not want to die here in prison,” he pleaded to the president during a televised interview.
Toledo’s request brings back to the forefront a rivalry that marked Peruvian politics for more than a decade. While Alberto Fujimori accumulated power from the Government Palace alongside his advisor Vladimiro Montesinos, Toledo traveled across Peru denouncing the deterioration of democracy and calling for mobilizations against the regime. In 2000, he challenged Fujimori in elections questioned due to fraud allegations, rejected the results, and led a mobilization that gathered thousands of people from different regions of the country. A few months later, the release of the first vladivideo ended up toppling a regime that seemed unmovable.
A corruption network woven by Vladimiro Montesinos from the National Intelligence Service was exposed. Alberto Fujimori resigned by fax from Japan, and the country opened a democratic transition that, months later, would lead Toledo to the Presidency. Twenty-six years later, history has reversed roles: the man who arrived at the Palace after the fall of Fujimorism now depends on the signature of its main heir to be released.
A few days ago, Ollanta Humala left the Barbadillo prison after the Constitutional Court annulled the process that kept him imprisoned for alleged money laundering. His release reduced to three the list of former presidents still held in Barbadillo, the prison reserved for ex-heads of State: Alejandro Toledo, Martín Vizcarra, and Pedro Castillo. In this scenario, the former president seeks to convince the new president appealing more to compassion than to legal arguments. During the interview with the program Sin Rodeos, besides asking her to quickly attend to his request, he congratulated her on her electoral victory.
“I want to congratulate you because you have been democratically elected, and that must be respected. I wish you the best of luck because Peru’s challenges are enormous. I hope you strengthen democracy, regardless of our differences,” he said in a conciliatory tone. He also recalled that he sent a message of condolences to Keiko Fujimori when her father died in 2024 and appealed to that gesture to insist on his request: “I ask Mrs. Keiko Fujimori, who received a message from me when her father died, to please expedite the process of my presidential pardon request.”
Toledo has said he is going through one of the most difficult moments since entering Barbadillo in 2023 after being extradited from the United States. His mother-in-law, Belgian Eva Fernenbug, died a few days ago in Brussels shortly before turning one hundred years old.
The former leader of the Peru Possible party is serving two sentences: one of 20 years and six months for having received bribes from the construction company Odebrecht in exchange for favoring it with the awarding of sections 2 and 3 of the South Interoceanic Highway, and another of 13 years and four months for the Ecoteva case, a money laundering scheme in which, according to Peruvian justice, the Costa Rican company Ecoteva Consulting Group was used to hide illicit money through the purchase of properties and bank deposits in the name of his mother-in-law.
Fernenbug, also prosecuted in that case, died in a nursing home without her only daughter, former first lady Eliane Karp, being able to accompany her. Karp has been in Israel since April 2023, where she avoids returning to Peru due to an international arrest warrant against her for money laundering. “They want to cremate her and we do not want that. I want to visit her, even if it is at her grave. That is the huge drama we have, we have no one who can bury her, because my wife Eliane is the only daughter and she is unjustly, because of what the Lava Jato people have done, being persecuted and they have put a red light on Interpol,” he has stated.
Toledo’s attempt to build a bridge with Keiko Fujimori has encountered an obstacle in the statements of his own wife. While the former president appealed for reconciliation and asked for a humanitarian gesture, Eliane Karp reopened the old rift with Fujimorism. She did so by responding to Senator Martha Chávez, who rejected a possible pardon recalling that Toledo never supported a similar measure for Alberto Fujimori. “There is a huge difference between what Alberto Fujimori did and the things my husband is accused of. Alberto Fujimori ordered the killing and torture of thousands of people. My husband has not killed anyone, has not ordered anyone to be tortured, and has not stolen or confiscated any money,” she said.
On the other hand, the Minister of Labor, Juan Sheput — who held the same position during Toledo’s government — has said that Keiko Fujimori asked him to visit the former president in prison. “There are those who say ‘Keiko is inhuman.’ That is false. On one occasion she told me: ‘Juan, no one visits Don Alejandro. It is important that you go.’ And I did so immediately,” he told Perú21. Sheput maintains that Toledo should serve his sentence at home. “I hope that in the coming days the possibility that Alejandro Toledo moves to house arrest will also materialize. Not freedom nor pardon, but house arrest, which is what corresponds to him due to his age,” he said. The decision is in the office of Alberto Fujimori’s daughter.
