Peru's ex-premier Alberto Fujimori wins thousands of Twitter followers from prison

Fujimori is exploiting a legal loophole that also lets him use YouTube

Alberto Fujimori, right, with his daughter, Keiko (Reuters)

Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori, in jail for authorising death squads and corruption, has 10,000 Twitter followers three weeks after opening an account.

He is not permitted to give interviews or make public statements and yet he's used YouTube three times to make short audio statements, setting off a media sensation in Peru as he rallies supporters and trades insults with political foes.

The legal loophole that let Fujimori go online has unnerved Peru's justice minister, and government lawyers are trying to come up with new legislation, for the self-broadcasting internet age, to further restrict inmates' speech.

Like other prisoners, Fujimori is not allowed to have a computer or a mobile phone, but he does have access to a public phone on the police base outside Lima where he is held. So he delivers tweets and recorded messages to supporters over the pay phone - and they post them online.

It's become a headache for President Ollanta Humala's government.

In one highly publicised tweet, Fujimori said: "It would have been cheaper for Nadine (Heredia, the first lady) and Ollanta to just pardon me. I would have solved the out-of-control internal insecurity (troubles) without asking anything in return."

Mr Humala has refused to pardon the 75-year-old Fujimori, who in 2009 became the world's only ex-president to be convicted by his own country's judiciary for crimes committed in office. Fujimori's supporters say he should be released for ill health, but a medical panel rejected the claims.

El Chino, as Peruvians call him, has found plenty of fault with the centre-left Humala, who defeated Fujimori's conservative daughter, Keiko, in the 2011 presidential run-off.

When Mr Humala stated before heading to the APEC Asia-Pacific summit last week that having a former president in prison wasn't good for Peru's image, Fujimori struck back.

In an audio posted to YouTube accompanied by photos from his presidency, he said Peru "has an excellent reputation thanks to our having extracted it from the apocalypse in 1990." Fujimori staved off economic collapse after taking office that year, but he fled Peru in disgrace a decade later amid a corruption scandal.

The YouTube comments were uploaded the day Fujimori began his social media offensive in earnest, even though he has had a Facebook account since July.

Peru's prisons chief, Jose Perez, said there's nothing he can do about Fujimori's social media use. "The first problem is that Fujimori doesn't directly manage his Facebook and Twitter accounts. So how can one restrict something he doesn't manage?"

While awaiting his sixth trial on more corruption charges, Fujimori passes his days writing his memoirs, painting and listening to opera, especially Maria Callas, said his personal physician, Alejandro Aguinaga.

He said the web is therapy for Fujimori. "Using social networks, he has told me, he will tell the true history of Peru, those that the effete leftists want to change."

AP