Peruvian opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former autocrat Alberto Fujimori, has been arrested as part of a far-reaching campaign financing probe, striking a fresh blow to the country's most powerful conservative movement.
The arrest on Wednesday came a week after a judge revoked a pardon for Keiko's father, who ruled Peru with an iron fist from 1990 to 2000 and was later imprisoned for human rights crimes.
"This is called political persecution," Keiko said in a hand-written letter posted on her Twitter account. "I've been detained without any legal grounds."
The 43-year-old has led her father's conservative movement since he fled the country in 2000 before resigning the presidency by fax from his family's homeland of Japan.
The arrest might give centrist President Martin Vizcarra a stronger hand in working with Congress, which is controlled by Keiko's party Popular Force, but might also prompt counterattacks by Keiko's allies.
Prosecutors allege Keiko led a criminal group inside her party that took $US1.2 million in illegal funds from Brazilian builder Odebrecht for her 2011 presidential bid, according to the resolution authorising her arrest.
Keiko and her party have denied taking money from Odebrecht.
The company has been at the centre of Latin America's biggest graft scandal since acknowledging in a 2016 leniency deal that it bribed officials in a dozen countries, including Peru.
Earlier this year, former Peruvian president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned in an Odebrecht-linked scandal.
Keiko, who served as Peru's "first lady" at 19 after her parents divorced, was shown on TV on Wednesday in a car in handcuffs after being detained.
A Columbia Business School graduate, she ran for president twice but was narrowly defeated by left-leaning Ollanta Humala in 2011 and by former Wall Street banker Kuczynski in 2016.
The arrest was requested by Jose Domingo, a prosecutor of money laundering cases.
Fujimori will be detained for 10 days, along with 19 others, including two former ministers in her father's government, according to her lawyer, Giuliana Loza.
Popular Force called the arrest a "coup d'etat" aimed at disempowering Congress.
