Peru's Fujimori admits to corruption, in full fall from grace

In a dramatic turn, Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori pled guilty Monday to bribing lawmakers and spying on former rivals for the presidency and others during his decade-long presidency.

Fujimori, 71, accepted counts of bribing opposition lawmakers, illegal purchase of a media outlet and wiretapping politicians, journalists and businesspeople through top aide and spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos.

"I do accept them," Fujimori, in a blue jacket and yellow tie, responded quietly, taking responsibility for the crimes listed at the start of his fourth trial here, after earlier repeated public denials of wrongdoing as president.

Fujimori had pled guilty to charges from his controversial presidency only once before, in July 2009, when he acknowledged illegally paying Montesinos 15 million dollars. In that case, he received a 7-1/2-year prison term now under appeal.

Among the targets of Fujimori's spying named in this trial was his political enemy Mario Vargas Llosa, in 1990, when the award-winning novelist was a rival for the presidency.

Prosecutor Jose Pelaez sought an 8-1/2 year jail sentence for Fujimori on three charges, a fine of US$1.6 million payable to the state, and a total of US$1 million for his victims.

"Wiretapping was constant and systematic for people who made the Fujimori government uncomfortable," Pelaez told the court.

He noted that other Fujimori targets included his now ex-wife Susana Higuchi, before their divorce was final, and former U.N. chief Javier Perez de Cuellar, in 1995, when he was a presidential rival.

The judge set the ex-president's sentencing for today.

The trial was the fourth and likely last for Fujimori, tracing a full fall from grace for the bespectacled agronomist son of Japanese immigrants who was president from 1990-2000.

He was sentenced in April to 25 years in prison for authorizing a secret military death squad to kill 25 people and ordering the kidnapping of a businessman and a journalist in the early 1990s.

In a separate trial that ended in July, Fujimori, who has been detained since his extradition from Chile in 2007 after living in exile in Japan for seven years, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for embezzlement.

And in a December 2007 trial, Fujimori was found guilty of abuse of power and sentenced to six years in prison.

Assuming he loses an appeal of the death squad conviction, only the 25-year sentence will be applied. Under Peruvian law, sentences in cases of multiple convictions cannot be served consecutively.