With two countries of birth, Peru and Japan, Alberto Fujimori's very nationality was an anomaly.

Fujimori, who died on September 11 at the age of 86, could never have become president if he had not been born in Peru. And according to his Peruvian passport, he came into the world in Lima in 1938, the son of Japanese immigrants.

However, a 1997 journalistic investigation found that his father had also entered him into a Japanese birth register — and had given his place of birth as Japan.

Fujimori took advantage of this loophole in 2000, when he fled into exile in Japan, resigning the leadership of Peru by fax. By that time, "El Chino" ("The Chinese"), as the Peruvians called him, had been in office for 10 years. He had just won his third presidency, in what was probably a rigged election, when serious allegations of corruption were made against him and the head of his secret service.

Fujimori's rise to the top was as sensational as his fall. As the son of cotton pickers from an ethnic minority, he was not an obvious candidate for greatness.

However, Fujimori made it to university, where he forged a remarkable academic career. He studied agricultural engineering, mathematics and physics in Peru, France and the United States, was appointed university dean, then rector, eventually becoming president of the National Commission of Peruvian University Rectors.

He entered politics in the late 1980s, and ran for president in 1990 as a rank outsider, the candidate of the protest party Cambio 90 (Change 90). There was widespread frustration with the........

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