LIMA – The leader of Peru’s opposition Popular Force party, Keiko Fujimori, will return to pretrial detention for 15 months after a court found Tuesday that she posed a flight risk.

Fujimori had already served more than a year in jail between 2018-2019 at the request of prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez – who is investigating money laundering and illegal campaign financing accusations against her – but was released under a Constitutional Court order.

On Tuesday, Judge Victor Zuñiga approved Perez’s new petition and ordered Fujimori’s detention by endorsing the prosecution’s flight risk, obstruction of justice and severity of the crimes argument.

The magistrate said the detention meets proportionality standards, adding that they’re suitable, adequate, necessary and proportionally strict.

Zuñiga said Fujimori could have been involved in money laundering when she was a congress member from 2006-2011 and tried to have been the nation’s “most important official” during the 2006 and 2011 presidential campaigns.

The judge deemed the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) a flight risk because of her lack of solid possessions on Peruvian soil.

In the last seven years, Fujimori and her family have lived in a house paying $1,600 in monthly rent, and the former presidential candidate has declared an income of more than 11,000 soles ($ 3,300) per month, which allegedly comes from party contributions.

The magistrate said that with such an income, she would have been able to purchase a home, but decided not to.

Minutes before arriving at the criminal court, where she was arrested, Fujimori recorded a message on her social networks in which she complained about this “new injustice” and “execution” promoted by “various interested parties.”

The former legislator announced she would surrender to authorities immediately because she has “a clear conscience” and would break her silence to give “a political response to this persecution.”

Fujimori added that she asked husband Mark Vito to present his case “to foreign governments and international organizations” to achieve the justice that, she considers, has been denied to her.

Vito told reporters “there is great injustice” against his wife and that they will “raise [their] voice in front of the international community” to show that there is no obstruction to justice.

Similarly, Fujimori’s lawyer Giulliana Loza told reporters that preventive detention is “a clear political persecution” and that they will resort “to all instances,” by rejecting the flight risk argument.

After the magistrate’s resolution, Fujimori said goodbye with a hug from her husband and was arrested by judicial police.