Peru top court annuls ex-leader's pardon

Supreme Court of Peru on Wednesday annulled ex-president Alberto Fujimori's pardon for crimes against humanity and ordered the 80-year-old's immediate arrest, officials said.

He was pardoned last December on humanitarian grounds, but critics said the move was in exchange for Fujimori's son helping then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski avoid impeachment.

Fujimori was 12 years into a 25-year jail sentence handed down for ordering two massacres by death squads between 1991 and 1992.

"This decision is inhuman, it's unjust," said his daughter Keiko, leader of the main opposition Popular Force party and seen by many as the heir to Fujimori's political dynasty.

One of Fujimori's lawyers, Miguel Perez, said on Chile's RPP radio the decision was subject to appeal.

The charge of crimes against humanity stemmed in part from the killings or disappearances of scores of civilians -- allegedly by a shadowy squad of military officers -- during Peru's bloody struggle against Maoist rebels.

The ex-ruler is revered and despised in equal measure in Peru. Admirers laud him for dragging the country's economy into the modern era and defeating the Shining Path guerrilla movement.