By Joji Sakurai
Associated Press Writer
Friday, Oct. 26, 2001; 8:53 p.m. EDT

TOKYO –– "Have you seen my son?" the woman asked.

The other mothers shook their heads. After a frantic search through the remnants of a banquet, Rosa Rojas Borda finally found her little Javier sitting on the ground, his fingers wrapped around a broom.

"I thought he was just afraid so I went to hug him and pick him up. Then the blood gushed out. There was a hole in his forehead," she told reporters in Tokyo.

Her eyes filled with tears, Rojas Borda on Friday described the night, 10 years ago, when a paramilitary death squad fired into a barbecue organized by residents of a poor Lima, Peru, neighborhood called Barrios Alto to raise funds for a new sewage pipe.

Fifteen people were killed. Rojas Borda's husband Manuel and eight-year-old Javier were among the victims.

Rojas Borda believes she knows who was ultimately responsible: former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori. And on Friday, she made her case to the media here for Japan to extradite Fujimori, who has sought refuge in his ancestral homeland.

"Fujimori ordered the killings," said Rojas Borda. "I want him to be held responsible."

The former president, who fled to Tokyo last November amid a corruption scandal, was charged in September by Peru's attorney-general with homicide in connection with the Barrios Alto massacre and another attack on Lima's La Cantuta University.

Peru wants Fujimori to face the murder charges and other allegations. Japan says Fujimori cannot be extradited because he is a Japanese citizen.

On Friday, lawyers and activists said that Japan has a moral – and legal – obligation to hand over the former leader.

"Japan supported the Fujimori government. Now Japan is shielding him," said Gloria Cano, a lawyer who has been investigating tortures and killings allegedly committed under Fujimori.

Makoto Teranaka, secretary general of Amnesty International Japan – which invited Rojas Borda and Cano to Tokyo – said that as a member of the United Nations Convention against Torture, Japan must extradite anyone charged with torture or try that person in its own courts.

A Japanese foreign ministry official, Noriteru Fukushima, said the government "will carefully consider" its legal duties if Fujimori's alleged crimes fall within the jurisdiction of the U.N. convention.

Fujimori was president when, in 1995, Peru's congress granted amnesty to all members of the nation's security forces who had been accused of human rights abuses between 1980 and 1995.

Included were members of the La Colina death squad, set up by former spy master Vladimir Montesinos and allegedly sanctioned by Fujimori. The group is blamed for the Barrios Alto and La Cantuta slayings.

The massacres were allegedly carried out to target the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group.

But Rojas Borda insists that innocents were killed.

"My son certainly wasn't a terrorist," she said.