2 Describe Massacre at Fujimori Trial

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Hooded men with machine guns burst into a Lima tenement and killed 15 people at a barbecue, including an 8-year-old boy, two survivors of the 1991 attack testified Friday at the murder trial of former President Alberto Fujimori.

Fujimori, 69, is facing up to 30 years in prison for allegedly ordering the massacre and the 1992 killings of nine university students and a professor. He is also charged with ordering the kidnappings of a prominent journalist and a businessman.

He has denied having any knowledge of death squad activities or ordering a dirty war against the Marxist Shining Path rebels in the early 1990s.

Natividad Condorcahuana, 51, one of four survivors of the massacre, recounted that on the night of Nov. 3, 1991, hooded men with automatic weapons with silencers burst into the inner patio of the downtown Lima tenement.

One of the men at the barbecue "confronted them and said, 'What's up, chief?' and their answer was to shoot him," said Condorcahuana, who was shot 11 times, including a bullet wound to the head.

Her husband Felipe Leon was shot six times but also survived. He said he crawled into the street over dead bodies to seek help. One of the dead was an 8-year-old boy.

"I was on the ground and got up to help my wife. I fainted and fell to the floor. Blood was squirting out of my chest into my face. It was hot. That was when I realized I was wounded," said Leon, who earned a living by selling medicinal herbs as a street vendor.

The death squad believed the house was a meeting place of Shining Path collaborators, including street vendors who provided information to the rebels to carry out attacks in downtown Lima, according to investigators.

Gustavo Gorriti, the journalist who was kidnapped, also testified Friday, saying he feared for his life when soldiers in civilian clothing stormed his home in the middle of the night and took him to the basement of army headquarters.

The kidnapping occurred on April 6, 1992, hours after Fujimori seized dictatorial powers, announcing over television that he was closing Congress because it was sabotaging his war against the rebels.

The leader of the soldiers "told me to accompany him" without resisting "because he had other methods" to make him cooperate, Gorriti said.

Gorriti was detained for 24 hours but not questioned. He was released the next day after an intense campaign by international journalist associations and human rights groups for his freedom.

Gorriti said he believed he was detained because of his reporting on the activities of Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's now jailed intelligence chief.

In 2000, Fujimori fled to Japan, where his parents were born, as his 10-year government collapsed amid a corruption scandal involving Montesinos. He flew to Chile in 2005 in an apparent attempt to stage a return to Peruvian politics.

Chile instead extradited him to Peru in September to stand trial on corruption and human rights abuse charges.