LIMA, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Some retired army generals denied Wednesday that there was a "dirty war" strategy to murder suspected rebels during the 1990-2000 presidency of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori.

    Testifying in the trial of Fujimori, the generals, speaking for the defense, said that there was no such a strategy to fight the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru insurgents.

    They also denied knowing of an army manual setting the guidelines for a low-intensity war against the two rebel groups.

    The manual, allegedly produced in 1991, is one of the documents used in the Fujimori trial to charge him of carrying out atrocities by setting up a hit squad known as the Colina Group.

    "The low-intensity war or parallel 'dirty war' was incompatible with the anti-subversive activities that we carried out," said retired general Jose Pastor Vives, who was a member of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    The prosecution is seeking to prove that links existed between Fujimori and the Colina Group blamed for the deaths of 25 civilians in two massacres in 1991 and 1992.

    Fujimori has said that he had only set general policy lines and never drew up anti-terrorist tactics or ordered a "dirty war" against subversives and knew nothing of the Colina Group.

    Fujimori fled to Japan in 2000 to escape a corruption scandal involving alleged bribes to legislators and lived there for five years. In 2005, he flew to Chile, where he might have been preparing for a return to politics in Peru.