Peru’s prison of ex-presidents is all full up

Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, waits at the Barbadillo prison in Lima, Peru, on March 30, 2022.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

LIMA, Peru — So many former presidents in Peru have run afoul with the law that the country has set up a special penitentiary for them — and it’s full.

The Barbadillo prison is located on the grounds of a police academy in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Lima. Due to violence and overcrowding at Peru’s standard prisons, part of the police compound has been converted into a kind of VIP jail with three custom-built cells that are more like small apartment units.

Barbadillo’s first inmate, former President Alberto Fujimori, arrived in 2007. He is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses.

Former President Pedro Castillo arrived last December after he was arrested for trying to dissolve congress and rule by decree. Alejandro Toledo, who faces charges of money laundering from his time as president in the early 2000s, arrived at the prison in April.

From France to Brazil to South Korea, many countries have prosecuted and jailed former presidents, while in the United States, former President Donald Trump could be sent to prison if convicted of mishandling classified documents after he left the White House. But Peru may hold the record for the most ex-leaders behind bars at one time, according to Rosa María Palacios, a Lima lawyer and political commentator.

“In Latin America, people envy us,” she says. “Many people abroad say: ‘At least you get them in jail.’”

But Palacios also sees the Barbadillo prison as a troubling symbol of Peru’s…