Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of human rights crimes on Tuesday, the first time a democratically elected Latin American president was found guilty in his own country of rights abuses.

A three-judge panel convicted him for ordering a military death squad to carry out two massacres that killed 25 people during his 1990-2000 rule, when he was battling guerrillas.

Nearly 70,000 people died in two decades of conflict in the Andean country.

"This court declares that the four charges against him have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt," Judge Cesar San Martin said.

Fujimori, 70, could spend the rest of his life in prison if he receives a lengthy sentence. The verdict could also have far-reaching political implications for Peru.

Current President Alan Garcia has also been accused of human rights violations stemming from his first term in the 1980s before he was replaced by Fujimori.

Fujimori was once lauded as a hero for defeating the brutal Shining Path guerrillas, taming economic chaos, and freeing dozens of hostages taken by the Tupac Amaru insurgency during a siege of the Japanese ambassador's house in Lima.

But a corruption scandal involving his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, sank his government in 2000. Fujimori fled for a while to exile in Japan, the country where his parents were born, before being extradited to Peru from Chile.

Reuters