The former chief of Peru's Armed Forces, Nicolas Hermoza Rios, testified that Peru's ex-president Alberto Fujimori knew all about the 1992 La Cantuta massacre and the Colina paramilitaries, La Republica newspaper said Monday.

Peru is trying to extradite Fujimori, Peru's president from 1990 to 2000, on charges linked to the murder of nine students and a university professor at La Cantuta University, a separate 1991 massacre of 15 people in Barrios Altos and paramilitary operations.

The newspaper quoted Hermoza's statement on Sept. 19, 2001, which is an important part of the dossier presented to the extradition tribunal in Chile, where Fujimori is currently on trial.

Hermoza, who led Peru's armed forces from 1991 to 1998, spoke to Fujimori's main advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, and Julio Salazar Monroe, head of the National Intelligence Service, at the time of the massacres, but did not speak directly with the president.

Peru's media described Hermoza as the third "strongman", behind Fujimori and Montesinos, that ran the country in the 1990s.

Fujimori was detained in Nov. 2005 in Chilean capital Santiago after living in Japan for five years. He fled Peru after being implicated in a gigantic corruption network orchestrated by Montesinos, who is currently in jail in the Peruvian city Callao. Fujimori is set to hear the court decision in April.

Source: Xinhua