Late last week, the current Peruvian president, Ollanta Humala, turned down the pardon plea of  former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, currently serving a 25-year prison term for corruption and crimes against humanity. The LA Times’ Chris Kraul and Adriana Leon remind us:

Fujimori, 74, was convicted in 2009 of ordering massacres against left-wing dissidents in 1991 and 1992 that left 25 people dead. He was also convicted of ordering the kidnapping of investigative journalist Gustavo Gorriti.

Above is a photo of Fujimori  (Handout / AFP/Getty Images, via LA Times), that shows him on a prison cot. He says he suffers from tongue cancer. Humala wasn’t moved.

The Fujimori story is a classic Latin American tragedy. After taking office in 1990, he took the fight to the bloodthirsty Shining Path guerrilla group, and steadied a basket-case economy suffering from Weimar-level inflation rates.

But Peruvian society would eventually decide that Fujimori should be punished for his overreach — for the extrajudicial disappearances, the quiet killings, the nightmare strategy that he used to beat back a nightmare.

So there he lies.