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Shining Path rebel leader sentenced to life

14.10.2006

LIMA, Oct 13, 2006 (AFP) - The founder of Peru's Shining Path rebel group, Abimael Guzman, was sentenced to life in prison late Friday in a re-trial for terrorism, murder and other crimes during a 20-year war that killed 70,000 people.
The former university professor, now 72, reacted little as the sentence was delivered, as did the rest of the radical Maoist rebel leaders on trial with him.
His girlfriend and Shining Path comrade, Elena Iparraguirre, was also sentenced to life.
At a naval base outside of Lima, where Guzman has been imprisoned since 1992, judges took eight hours to read the lengthy sentence.
The 11 Shining Path leaders on trial with him received sentences of 24 to 35 years.
They later applauded their sentences.

Prosecutor Luz Ibanez objected to the sentences "because the evidence presented and the sentence of aggravated terrorism handed down for the whole (rebel) leadership should have resulted in life in prison for all, and not (some) sentences of 35 to 24 years."
In 1992 Guzman was sentenced to life in prison for treason in a military court whose judges' identities were hidden. The sentence was overturned in 2005 by Peru's Constitutional Court, which ruled the secret military court did not guarantee a fair trial.
Civilian prosecutors this time sought a life sentence against Guzman, who led some 7,000 Shining Path fighters in a guerrilla war in the 1980s and 1990s.
Guzman's new trial began one year ago after his prior sentence was overturned in 2003 by Peru's Constitutional Court, which ruled the secret military court did not guarantee a fair trial.
The group's fight with the Peruvian government left 70,000 people dead, or missing and presumed dead, in the armed campaign between 1980 and 2000, a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission found in 2003.
The truth commission found that the insurgency was the "main perpetrator of human rights violations" during the period reviewed and used "extreme violence and cruelty" in its attacks on rural villages.
The Maoist-inspired Shining Path had its beginnings in the 1960s in Ayacucho department, one of the poorest in poverty-wracked Peru.
Guzman's particular threat was in many ways his interpretation of Marxism, and the way in which it turned his followers into fanatical followers of his ideas and ideals. They saw Guzman's as a guiding philosophy, and came to believe it was a fourth "sword" of Marxism after Marx, Lenin and Mao.
The "great leap forward" came in 1979 when the group came out of hiding and announced conditions were in place for a revolution to be carried from the countryside to the cities, just as Peru emerged from 12 years of military dictatorship.
Guzman's nemesis, then-president Alberto Fujimori, is now himself sought by Peru's justice system for human rights violations in his fight against the Shining Path and a smaller Marxist guerrilla group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).
While Fujimori is widely credited with the 1992 capture of Guzman, which largely defeated the rebels, prosecutors want to try him for the murder of suspected leftist sympathizers.
Prosecutors are seeking Fujimori's extradition from Chile to try him in Peru on corruption charges stemming from his 1990-2000 presidency, when he shuttered the legislature and the courts, claiming the moves were necessary to combat the Shining Path and the MRTA.

Source: World News (EAA) - AFP

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