Peru military leader who oversaw return of democracy dies

By FRANKLIN BRICEÑO
Associated Press

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Former Peruvian President Francisco Morales Bermudez has died at age 100. The general was credited with leading Peru back to civilian government — but he also was convicted abroad of involvement in “dirty war” crimes. His son Remigio Morales says the former president died Thursday night “of complications due to his age.” Morales Bermudez overthrew a harder-line junta in 1975 and immediately allowed all political exiles to return. He oversaw democratic elections in 1980 that returned civilian rule. But Italian courts convicted him of involvement in the abduction of Argentine leftists who had been living in Peru and who vanished in the hands of their country’s own dictatorship.