TOKYO, August 14, 2008 (AFP) - Former Peruvian leader Alberto Fujimori's Japanese wife has gone public on why she married him two years ago, saying she was trying to help the former strongman who is now on trial.

'My relationship with Fujimori is more like that of a father and daughter,' Satomi Kataoka, a wealthy and well-connected hotel manager in Tokyo, told International Press, a Spanish-language weekly in Japan.

'The marriage took place in order to help him,' she told the newspaper.

Kataoka said she believed the marriage in 2006 would pressure the Japanese government to do more to protect the former strongman, who holds Japanese nationality by virtue of his ancestry.

Fujimori, dogged by a corruption scandal, ended his decade-old presidency in 2000 by flying to Tokyo and faxing a resignation letter from a hotel room.

He abruptly took a private jet in 2005 to Chile, where he was arrested and eventually extradited to Peru.

Fujimori had said he had gone to Chile as part of a plan to return to power in Peru. But some analysts have speculated that he outstayed his welcome in Japan, which was embarrassed by the diplomatic spat with Peru over him.

Fujimori is standing trial on charges he ordered two massacres that killed 25 people as he stamped out a Maoist insurgency in Peru. But his supporters in Japan credit him with reviving Peru's economy and restoring peace.

Fujimori, who divorced his politician wife while president, was 67 when he married the then 39-year-old Kataoka.