The former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, has been sentenced to six years in prison for stealing documents from an investigation into corruption in his former government.
Peru's supreme court found Fujimori guilty of ordering an aide to break into the house of the intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, who was gathering information on the Fujimori administration.
The ruling was the first arising from several charges he faces after being extradited to Peru in September to face trial, after seven years in exile in Chile. He is also charged with allegedly wiretapping political opponents, paying bribes to congressmen and broadcasters, and paying $15 million (£7.3 million) in apparent hush money to Montesinos.
Fujimori said that he would appeal against today's ruling. His daughter, Keiko, a member of congress, called the sentence excessive and accused the court of bias. "If this was a political persecution before, now it's become a judicial persecution," she said.
Fujimori, 69, is also facing a separate trial on human rights charges. He is accused of ordering two massacres that killed 25 people, and two kidnappings, during his 10-year rule that collapsed in 2000 under the weight of a corruption scandal.
The human rights trial, which began yesterday, is expected to shed light on the Colina Group, a secretive death squad that operated in Peru in the early years of Fujimori's presidency. The trial is expected to last well into next year.
Fujimori could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison if found guilty, but he has vehemently protested his innocence. As proceedings began in Lima yesterday, Fujimori exploded in defiance before three supreme court judges. "I received a country almost in collapse, exhausted by hyperinflation, international financial isolation and widespread terrorism," he shouted.
"My government rescued the human rights of 25 million Peruvians with no exceptions," he said. "If any detestable acts were committed, I condemn them, but they were not done on my orders. I reject the charges totally."
Doctors halted the trial temporarily when they determined that Fujimori had what they called "a crisis of hypertension".
The recent extradition of Fujimori from Chile, where he had lived since leaving Japan in 2005, has forced many Peruvians to reflect on the methods his government used to vanquish two leftist insurgencies, Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
"Humble people feel this is unjust," said Carmen Lozano, a former lawmaker who supports Fujimori, referring to the sentencing. A large part of the population still supports the former leader, crediting him with rescuing Peru from the brink of economic and political collapse.
