LIMA, Peru (AP):

A COURT imposed a six-year prison sentence yesterday on disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who already faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a cell after three previous convictions. He also was fined US$9 million for authorising wiretaps and bribes.

The sentencing concluded two years of televised trials that forced a country still divided over its bloody past to relive the darkest days of Fujimori's authoritarian, corruption-riddled administration.

Resigned to fate

Animated and unre-pentant in early trials, the ailing 71-year-old former president appeared resigned in his later hearings. TV cameras often caught Fujimori sleeping at his table alone in the centre of the courtroom.

Asked by the presiding judge yesterday if he accepted his sentence in the corruption trial, Fujimori stood up and quietly told the court, "I move to nullify."

On Monday, Fujimori pleaded guilty to the charges, a decision his lawyer says was based on the belief that he could not get a fair trial before the special Supreme Court panel.

Since his 2007 extradition to Peru from Chile, the three-judge panel has convicted Fujimori of crimes against humanity for authorising military death squads, of abuse of power for an illegal search and of embezzlement for paying his spy chief US$15 million in state funds.