He was arrested. Or conspiracy. Or ...
Sheriff says ex-Peruvian president jailed over weekend; he says different
MENLO PARK >> What arrest?
That’s essentially what a former Peruvian president said when asked about police reports that he was jailed over the weekend for being dangerously drunk at a Menlo Park pub that’s a favorite hangout of Stanford students and tech employees.
Alejandro Toledo Manrique, 72, was picked up by San Mateo County sheriff’s deputies Sunday night when he “caused a disturbance” at the Dutch Goose and refused the restaurant staff’s request to leave the premises,
said sheriff’s spokeswoman Detective Rosemerry Blankswade.
Toledo, who is wanted on bribery charges in his home country, has listed recent residences in Los Altos and Menlo Park.
The former head of state, whose jail booking photo has been widely released, told the news agency Reuters that the arrest story was part of a conspiracy
hatched by political opponents who have long maligned him since he became Peru’s first indigenous president two decades ago.
Instead of wading into conspiracy theories, Blankswade simply pointed to Toledo’s mugshot and jail records to prove the arrest happened. As of Tuesday afternoon, Toledo did not respond to a phone message left for him by this news organization.
Deputies contacted Toledo around 10:30 p.m. Sunday at the pub on Alameda de las Pulgas in an unincorporated
pocket west of Menlo Park, noting he “objectively showed signs of being under the influence of alcohol,” Blankswade said.
They arrested him on suspicion of misdemeanor public intoxication and took him to the San Mateo County jail, where he was held until Monday morning. Blankswade said while Toledo was in custody, the Sheriff’s Office was contacted by Interpol regarding charges against him in Peru.
Toledo has been charged by authorities in Peru with
taking $20 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, in a case that has ensnared several other former Peruvian presidents, all of whom have denied wrongdoing.
Blankswade said the Sheriff’s Office determined it could not detain Toledo for the charges in Peru. He was released around 9 a.m. Monday.
“Unless (Peru authorities) were willing to pick him up, there was nothing to hold him on,” Blankswade said. “The (intoxication)
charges alone were not enough to detain him without any other reason.”
Blankswade said the incident is considered resolved and the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t plan to recommend charges against Toledo, who she said was cooperative once he was in custody.
Toledo’s arrest “has no relation with the extradition process underway, which is being handled with the utmost zeal and in coordination with various institutions,” Peru’s foreign ministry told The Associated Press in a written statement.
The news organization also reported that in February 2017, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski asked President Donald Trump to deport Toledo.
Toledo, who led Peru from 2001 to 2006, is a legal U.S. resident who settled in the Bay Area and has served multiple stints as a fellow or visiting scholar at Stanford University, where he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate.