A former Peruvian president was reportedly arrested at a local restaurant Sunday night for something unrelated to a bribery scandal that makes him a fugitive in his homeland.
San Mateo County sheriff’s deputies say they responded to reports of Alejandro Toledo Manrique, 73, being drunk in public outside a restaurant on the 3500 block of Alameda de las Pulgas in Menlo Park. Officers booked the disgraced statesman around 10:30pm that night on suspicion of misdemeanor public intoxication.
Manrique, who has reportedly lived in Los Altos for the past couple years, spent the night in jail and walked free the next morning. The DA declined to press charges.
According to the Associated Press, the arrest did not lead to his extradition back to Peru, where he served as president from 2001 to 2006 and where prosecutors accuse him of accepting $20 million in bribes from a Brazilian construction firm. San Mateo officials said they alerted Interpol, but the agency declined to take him into custody.
The AP reports that Manrique granted a brief interview with Peruvian radio station RPP in which he dismissed the Sunday night arrest. “I’m at my home, writing my book,” he told a reporter who reached him by phone Monday.
“Toledo is accused of taking $20 million in bribes while leading Peru. He has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Peruvian authorities have been seeking his extradition since 2017.”
Is there an “extradition treaty” with Peru and the United States? If there is, “Toledo” should have been held and returned.
On another Peruvian matter, I am told Lima has some really good restaurants.
David S. Wall
Hahaha, I’m sure when Mafia Don moves to Moscow to avoid prosecution in the US after his first and only term is over, Russia won’t deport him back to the US when he’s arrested for solicitation.
It’s just amazing what kind of international bar fly’s you can attract with Sanctuary Brand Fly Paper.
Leave this poor Peruvian immigrant alone. He is obviously just yearning to be free and just seeking a better life, probably making a living working at a job most Americans won’t do ( If he has been living in Los Altos, he is certainly working in a place that most working Americans can’t afford to live).
At least he’s one illegal immigrant who hasn’t gone on welfare, or stabbed a woman to death in her home (Bambi Larson) or kidnapped a child from inside her home, forceably in front of her family.(Jeanette Tamayo).
Where’s your compassion !?! California is a sanctuary State where criminals from other countries are welcomed, and where they are free to commit crimes in their homeland, then enter the U.S. illegally and be immune to deportation.
What the hell, if California’s current sanctuary policies had been in effect back in the late 1940’s, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengale would never have had to waste their time fleeing to 2nd rate countries like Argentina and Uruguay after the war.
I want my next vacation in Peru. I’ll order a pitcher of margaritas, get drunk in public, then spend the rest of my life in a Peruvian prison with no extradition to the U.S.