PERUVIAN PROSECUTORS WANT KEIKO FUJIMORI DETAINED

Four days after the presidential election in Peru, the public prosecutor's office has again requested the pre-trial detention of candidate Keiko Fujimori, Denis Duettmann reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

The right-wing populist politician had violated the conditions of her release from preventive custody in an ongoing corruption trial, the prosecutors said in justifying the request for Fujimori’s detention on Thursday.

Fujimori has already been remanded in custody several times in recent years on corruption charges.

Meanwhile, everything was pointing to a narrow victory for the hard-left candidate Pedro Castillo over Fujimori.

After almost all votes had supposedly been counted, the candidate of the Marxist-Leninist party Peru Libre received 50.17 percent, to Fujimori's 49.82 percent.

Earlier, the Latin American teleSUR news agency reported that 100% of the ballots been counted. However, the electoral office has not yet declared either candidate the winner.

Following allegations of fraud, Fujimori's party, Fuerza Popular, had also recently requested that around 200,000 votes be declared invalid because of irregularities at the polling stations.

"We will continue to defend the legitimate right of millions of Peruvians until the last vote," Fujimori said on Thursday afternoon. Poll observers, on the other hand, declared that Sunday's run-off election had largely been conducted in an orderly manner.

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