People Profile - César Nakazaki Servigón, Peru
People Profile - César Nakazaki Servigón,
Peru
Who is he? César Nakazaki defended former President Alberto Fujimori against the four human rights abuse charges on which he was convicted on 8 April.
Why watch him? Nakazaki's defence
of Fujimori was based on challenging the prosecution to prove that Fujimori had
given the orders that led to the massacres at La Cantuta and Barrios Altos (in
which 25 people were killed) and to the kidnapping of two of Fujimori's critics.
Unlike some in Fujimori's entourage, notably Keiko Fujimori, the former
president's daughter, Nakazaki accepted that the three man tribunal from the
supreme court had the right to try Fujimori. Nakazaki argues, and is basing the
appeal against Fujimori's conviction on these grounds, that the prosecution has
failed to prove that Fujimori gave orders that led to crimes.
Born: 1964, Lima.
Education: He is the son of a paediatrician, César Nakazaki. He was educated at the Colegio Manuel Pardo in Chiclayo, and then took a law and political sciences degree at Lima University. His legal patron is José Santos Chichizola who taught at the university and also had a flourishing private practice.
Public Life: Nakazaki is Peru's most prominent criminal lawyer. His critics say that he takes on too many cases and leaves a lot of the important legwork to underlings. In Fujimori's case, Nakazaki left the crucial period of disclosure, when both sides reveal the evidence they will use in the case, to two of his underlings, so pressing was his business elsewhere. Nakazaki is famous for getting prominent military officers, politicians and businessmen acquitted. On the other he led the legal campaign for compensation for the victims of two fires in 2002, at the Utopia discotheque and Mesa Redonda, a huge public market, which killed, respectively, 29 and 290 people. He has also defended Magaly Medina, a sensationalist TV journalist who films celebrities in compromising circumstances. She went to prison briefly in October last year.
Timeline:
1982: Lima University.
2000 onwards: involved in a series of high profile legal cases.
Strengths: Nakazaki has a high profile in Peru. He is involved in virtually all the major legal cases. He makes innovative legal arguments and appears to get most of his clients off. His argument in Fujimori's case is that Fujimori's anti-terrorism policies had nothing to do with the charges against him. He argues that the prosecution had to prove that Fujimori was directly involved in the crimes of which he was accused and, Nakazaki claims, there is no evidence that he was. Nakazaki will argue again in the appeal that Fujimori cannot be held responsible for the criminal implementation of his policies by junior officials.
Weaknesses: His critics say that he takes on too many cases and skimps on preparatory work. They claim that this was what happened in the Fujimori case. Nakazaki admits that he has yet to read all of the 711 page judgment against Alberto Fujimori but nevertheless claims that it is wrong. He says that in the next few days he will go through the judgment and find the holes in it.
Prospects: Fujimori's appeal will be a crucial test of the Peruvian legal system. The system was praised by human rights' activists for delivering the verdict on 8 April, and the 25 year jail sentence against Fujimori, but it seems that the court's judgment that Fujimori was the “autor mediatico" (indirect perpetrator) is legally questionable. The court also ruled, unusually, that the prosecution had proved its case only “beyond reasonable doubt." These two judgments (indirect perpetrator and reasonable doubt) may give Nakazaki enough scope to get the verdict overturned on appeal. Nakazaki argues that Fujimori was not directly responsible for, or involved in, the massacres at Barrios Altos and La Cantuta and therefore cannot be guilty: indeed one witness, colonel Pino said that the death squad Grupo Colina, which carried out the killings, was an adhoc squad. The prosecution alleged that Fujimori funded the Grupo Colina through secret accounts but there is no unequivocal evidence of this.