The death-squad killings in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta are the most serious charges facing former President Alberto Fujimori back in Peru.

BY TYLER BRIDGES

LIMA - Nearly 14 years ago to the day, a dozen hooded men carrying silenced submachine guns stormed a poor community's barbecue here and opened fire. When they were done, 15 people were dead, including an 8-year-old boy.

The so-called Barrios Altos killing was one of two massacres carried out by a paramilitary squad that now present the most serious legal danger to former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, under arrest in neighboring Chile while authorities there consider a Peruvian extradition request.

Fujimori, who arrived in Santiago Sunday after five years of self-exile in Japan, resigned the presidency in 2000 as his government collapsed amid a gigantic corruption scandal focused on his spymaster, Vladimiro Montesinos.

In all, Fujimori is facing 21 charges in Peru, including the accusation that he used public money to make a $15 million payoff to Montesinos. If convicted, the 67-year-old Fujimori could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison, effectively a life sentence.

But the worst cases he faces are charges that he approved the death squad that attacked the barbecue crowd in Barrios Altos on Nov. 3, 1991, and shot to death nine students and a professor at Lima's La Cantuta University on July 18, 1992.

In both cases, the government security agents who made up the hit squads believed they were striking at members or supporters of the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group then waging an often brutal war against the government.

AMNESTY DEAL

The army major who led the death squad, known as the Grupo Colina, and 10 other soldiers were found guilty of the killings by a court martial in 1994, but were freed a year later as part of a general amnesty sought by Fujimori.

The ex-president now faces the maximum prison sentence -- Peru has no death penalty -- if found guilty in either case, as well as a $29 million fine.

''We don't have any doubt that Fujimori was the intellectual author of the crimes,'' said Carmen Amaro, whose older brother, Armando, was a 25-year-old student leader and one of the victims of the La Cantuta killings.

HOPES FOR JUSTICE

Amaro said the news of Fujimori's arrest in Chile has raised hopes that at long last the former president will be brought to justice. ''It's what we've fought for unceasingly for 13 years,'' Amaro said.

Her mother, the sister of another Cantuta victim and four human-rights attorneys flew to Chile on Tuesday to press the case against Fujimori and put a human face on the extradition proceedings.

'We want the victims' voice to be heard,'' said Alejandro Silva, an official of the National Coordination of Human Rights, the Lima-based group that organized the trip.

While in Japan, Fujimori repeatedly denied any knowledge of the death squad's killings, a stance repeated by his chief spokesman in Lima Tuesday.

''There's a lot of speculation but no direct evidence against him,'' said Carlos Raffo. ``Nobody can say that they saw Fujimori directly involved. It's just a lot of third-party comments, and no court is going to allow that.''

Raffo noted that Japan officials had twice raised questions about the evidence against Fujimori in the two cases as they denied Peruvian extradition requests.

Carlos Rivera, an attorney for Barrios Altos families, noted that Fujimori regularly took credit for overseeing the battle against guerrillas, and that a government vehicle that normally transported a Fujimori brother was used to ferry some members of the Grupo Colina to and from Barrios Altos.

Silva also said that soldiers guarding the entrance to La Cantuta gave permission to the Grupo Colina to enter the campus.

They took away the 10 victims, and their bodies were found a year later.

''One branch of the military doesn't give that kind of permission without approval from the highest authority,'' Silva said.

Martín Rivas, the army major who commanded the Grupo Colina, said in comments published two years ago that the group had been formed by Montesinos with Fujimori's approval. He did not provide specific evidence tying the ex-president to the crimes.

''The object of the Barrios Altos operation was not to capture terrorists,'' Rivas said in the interview, published in the book Eye to Eye. ``The objective was to send an overwhelming message to the Shining Path.''

TURNAROUND

A previously unknown university chancellor, Fujimori was elected president in 1990 at a time when the country seemed on the verge of collapse.

Within two years, he had decimated the Shining Path guerrillas, vanquished hyperinflation that forced ordinary Peruvians to wait in line to buy bread and cooking oil and oversaw an economic rebound.

But by the late 1990s, he had become increasingly authoritarian as his government intimidated opponents and engaged in wholesale bribery to keep its hold on power, even as he retained the affection of millions of poor people.

Rivas was sent to a new trial this year for the two massacres after the 1995 amnesty law was repealed in 2001. Other defendants at the trial, which began in August, include Montesinos -- who is already serving a 15-year sentence on corruption charges -- plus four army generals and 45 others. The trial is expected to last well into next year.

Under Peruvian law if Fujimori is extradited, he would be tried for the killings before Peru's Supreme Court.